Sick of rubbish AI answers?

Most of the rubbish answers you get from AI come from accepting its first attempt. I add three lines to every prompt to force a second one.

Line one. "Before you answer, ask me three questions that would make your answer better."

Take the first answer an AI gives you and you get average output. When it interviews you first, it pulls out context you would never have thought to include, and the answer gets built for your situation instead of everyone's.

Line two. "Research this online first, then fact check everything you find."

Without it, AI pulls from training data that could be years old and fills the gaps with guesses. I use this line on every script I record about AI, because one wrong claim goes out with my face on it. And if the question touches your health or your money, a guess can cost you far more than the minute the checking takes.

Line three. "Grade your answer out of ten on the five criteria that matter most, explain every score under ten, then redo the work until they're all tens."

Yes, you're asking it to mark its own homework, and it will go a bit easy on itself. It still works, because the scoring forces it to hunt for the weaknesses it would otherwise skim past.

All three lines do the same job. Left alone, AI hands you the first thing that comes out. These lines force a second pass, and the second pass is where the quality is.

Pick one and add it to your next prompt today.