Over Confident Intern
Stop me if you’ve heard this, but during a recent conference presentation I heard a speaker describe Generative AI (i.e., ChatGPT and all the cousins) as an over-confident intern. It made me chuckle – and then I realized that I quite like that characterization.
Maybe y’all have heard that line before… but it was new to me.
I use AI almost every day to generate ideas, suggest alternative angles, strengthen arguments, and adjust my tone. Occasionally, I even throw it a half-baked idea that I would be embarrassed to share with another human.
I’m not an AI-expert. I can’t claim any agentic experience just yet (I’m not sure I even understand what that sentence means).
The more I use AI, the more I am impressed and the more I am appalled. It’s truly incredible at doing simple, repetitive tasks. It’s great at getting something routine off your desk – just like you’d expect from an intern. But when you give it more complex tasks that require more nuance or interpolation it makes up stuff – just like you’d expect from an intern who wants to impress you.
One of my uncles used to joke that if you say something with confidence you can get people to believe anything – and he’s right. The problem is now the “people” saying things with confidence are “AI Agents” who don’t have the phrase “I don’t know” in their vocabulary.
Call me crazy, but I’m in favour of a little more “I don’t know…”
My best output happens with a human-AI-human sequence. I start with the idea and think about what I want to accomplish (keeping the end goal in mind). I start creating. Once I’ve got a workable concept, I turn to AI to suggest enhancements, fill gaps, or suggest different options. When I have options, I take back control and make the final choices. Tweak the words. Adjust the calls to action. Use my voice. Make it mine.
If you let the overconfident intern run the show, they will make snap judgements based on patterns that may or may not hold true for you.
Provide some oversight and supervision. Please. For all of us.
Inspiration
Inspiration: Brushammar, D. (2025). “Librarians as Knowledge Leaders.” Internet Librarian Virtual Conference 2025.