One of the most accurate takes on AI I've seen all year comes from a cartoon frog tablet in Disney•Pixar's Toy Story 5.
Her name is Lilypad, and she's Bonnie's new favorite high-tech device. Lily is absolutely certain she knows best, and when she settles on the right way to help Bonnie make friends, she goes all in.
She's also wrong.
Confident and correct are two different things, and the day we forget that is the day it will cost us something.
But Lily's confidence never wavers, not even when the plan is clearly making things worse. The moment she sees the damage she's caused, she's crushed. She apologizes profusely on the spot. Then throws everything she has into fixing it.
Sound familiar?
That's been my experience with nearly every Gen AI tool I've used this year. Same self-assured voice whether it's nailing the answer or completely off the rails. Catch the mistake and it apologizes in a heartbeat, then hands you a fix delivered with the exact same confidence that got it wrong in the first place.
None of this makes the technology bad. Lily genuinely has the best intentions for Bonnie, and Gen AI tools really are useful. But confident and correct are two different things, and the day we forget that is the day it will cost us something. Ultimately, we're accountable for the results, not the tech.
So stay in the loop. Not to slow things down, but because someone has to recognize the difference between an answer that sounds right and one that actually is. AI will give you both with a straight face.
Lilypad needed someone who could tell the difference between confidence and correctness. AI does too. That's where we still matter.