Checking facts, citations and AI's confident lies
Listen to this lesson
Nigerian voice narration
Fictional training case. Adeyemi's AI-drafted brief cited three reports, two of which do not exist when she tries to locate them. This lesson covers verifying every citation against a real, checkable source and triangulating important facts with an authoritative source before circulation. Work through the example, identify the evidence needed and practise the method with cleared or synthetic inputs. Any additional figures in the explanation are separate practice examples, not claimed rows in a downloadable file.
Worked example
In this fictional exercise, an AI draft claims an adoption increase and cites a plausible-sounding report. Adeyemi searches the official publisher site and cannot locate the report or a supporting passage. She removes the unsupported claim rather than adding “reportedly.” A separate practice statistic has one blog repeating it, but no traceable original publication. She checks the intended population and period and looks for an authoritative source. Asking AI for an opposing view can suggest verification questions, but is not an independent source. Only verified claims enter the brief; unsupported figures stay out.
The method
Request AI's claimed source and confidence for every fact, independently search to confirm the source exists and says what is claimed, and for high-stakes figures ask AI to argue the opposite case then verify against an authoritative source rather than accepting a single confident citation.
Worked practice and common mistakes
All named statistics and reports in this exercise are fictional illustrations, not sources to cite. Check actual author, title, date and supporting passage. Three blogs copying one figure are not three independent confirmations. A model’s self-reported 95% confidence is not a calibrated probability of truth. Seek real supporting evidence even when the answer sounds certain.
Review before using the result
AI citations are sometimes invented and must be verified. A citation that cannot be found should be removed or replaced, not softened. Triangulation means confirming with multiple independent sources, not one confident claim.
Your workplace practice
Use the recommended free assistant with this lesson's fictional example. For each factual claim in my draft below, state the likely source and how confident you are. Then list which claims I must verify manually before this brief is circulated. Keep a copy of the input and draft. Compare the result with the verification steps above, record any correction, and retain placeholders where evidence is missing. The expected result is a checked draft for human review, not an automatically approved decision. Course examples and practice responses are fictional; amounts, dates, rules and thresholds are not official guidance or supplier quotations.
Open Perplexity (free tier) and paste this prompt there. Provides source-oriented search results to help you independently check facts and citations.
For each factual claim in my draft below, state the likely source and how confident you are. Then list which claims I must verify manually before this brief is circulated.
Why this tool: Provides source-oriented search results to help you independently check facts and citations.
Hit a free limit? Switch to ChatGPT or Gemini and continue — the prompt works in any assistant.