Unlocking Gen AI’s full potential: The 95% confidence trick

Ever feel like AI-generated content just isn’t hitting the mark? That’s because most people expect AI to get things right on the first try—but that’s not how it works. In this episode of How I Work, Dr. Amantha Imber sits down with Inventium’s Gen AI expert, Neo Aplin, to reveal a powerful trick that transforms AI from a basic tool into a true collaborator. The secret? Get AI to interview you first before it generates anything. This simple yet game-changing approach ensures better, more relevant results—every time. 

What You’ll Learn: 

• Why AI often gets things wrong without proper context—and how to fix it  

• The 95% Confidence Rule: How to make AI ask clarifying questions before responding  

• How treating AI like a conversation partner improves content quality  

• A step-by-step example of using this method for sales emails  

• What to do when AI asks a question you can’t answer  

• How to refine AI-generated content through iterative Q&A 

Next time you prompt AI, add this line: Before you respond, ask me any questions you need until you are 95% confident in doing a great job. 

Want to master Gen AI? Check out Inventium’s Gen AI Productivity System, a self-paced online course designed to help you work smarter and reclaim hours every week. Get started at https://inventium.com.au/genai/

Connect with Neo Aplin on LinkedIn.

 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Picture this. You're staring at chat GPT, wondering if you're
barely scratching the surface of what's possible. Maybe you've dabbled
with generating a few emails, or perhaps you're already using
it daily, but like most of us, there's that nagging
feeling you could be doing so much more. At south

(00:22):
By Southwest, Sydney last year, I remember futurist Brian Johnson
dropped a truth bomb that stuck with me. He said,
AI is not taking your job. It's a human who
is using AI who's taking your job. That hit home
and for the past two years I have been living
and breathing jen Ai, making it an essential part of

(00:45):
my toolkit, and through my consultancy Inventium, I've seen firsthand
how proper AI training that we've been doing with many
of our clients can transform the way people work. That
is why I'm thrilled to bring you something special over
the next four tuesdays, I am going to be joined

(01:07):
by Inventium's resident at Genai Guru Neo Applin, and together
we'll share some game changing tips that will help you
level up how you use Genai. Just quickly, before we
get into today's episode if you want to go defilt
and learn how to work with Ai instead of worrying

(01:28):
about being replaced by it. I have something that I
think you will love. But my consultancy Inventium, We've created
the Genai Productivity System. It's a self paced online course
designed to help you boost productivity and save literally hours
every week by using Jenai a whole lot smarter. In
just a few hours, you'll go from Jenai dabbler to

(01:51):
Jeni expert with practical tools you can start using immediately.
Head to inventium dot com, dot au, forward slash Jenai
to check it out and get started today. Welcome to
How I Work, a show about habits, rituals, and strategies

(02:11):
for optimizing your day. I'm your host, doctor Amantha Imber.
So many people assume that Jenai should just get it
right from the start. What is the biggest misconception about
how Ai understands prompts.

Speaker 2 (02:27):
The biggest misconception is actually that Jenai will get it
right from the start and it will understand exactly what
you really want to achieve from the words you've actually
written within that prompt, so it will make an assumption
trying to make it easier for you. So you need
to give the context behind what you're trying to achieve
and all the backgrounds so it can do a great job.

(02:48):
And so the misconception is unless you that it will
give that great answer without you giving all that background.

Speaker 1 (02:56):
So there's quite a counterintuitive approach that you said in
terms of getting Ai to interview us instead of just
giving it instructions. So can you tell me a bit
about how this works and why it is so effective.

Speaker 2 (03:11):
Yeah, it's like using a Jenai like a person. So
if you've got a work colleague or you've got an
expert you've brought in to do something, you don't just say, hey,
look i'd like you to do this and then just
let them go. There's always a conversation involved, so they're
asking what you wanted to achieve, what the background is.
They'll ask you clarifying questions about it. Treating Jenai like

(03:32):
that expert or like someone within your team changes the
mindset of you, the person working with Jenai, so that
it'll then have a conversation with you so you can
give the information to it. That way, you don't have
to feel like you're writing a massive tome before you
put a prompt in so you can say, hey, look,
ask me as many questions as you need so you

(03:53):
can do a great job. And then we've got those
questions going with a conversation going, then it understands the
background and it'll do a much better because of it.

Speaker 1 (04:01):
So let's take a real world example. Say I'm writing
a sales email to a prospect. How would you suggest
that I prompt AI in order to get the best
results to get this amazing sales email.

Speaker 2 (04:16):
Yeah, okay, So the first thing I do is say,
these are the goals that I want to achieve with
this sales email. Don't go straight to the sales email
content itself. The reason for that is that GENAI then
knows loosely what the outcome needs to fulfill, what the
goals that it needs to fulfill are. Then tell it
what you're wanting to achieve. Look, I want a sales
email with these and these and these information in it.

(04:37):
And then you'll say, hey, before you do any work,
don't do any work, But before you do any work,
what I want you to do is ask me is
many clarifying questions that you need until you're ninety five
percent confident that you can do a job right now,
people ask me why ninety five percent, And it's about
a problem with English language, Like if you say I
want you to be kind of confident or mostly confident,

(05:00):
how confident is that? Whereas if you're really specific and
you're saying ninety five percent confident, it means don't ask
me a thousand questions, ask me enough questions until you've
got a good background and you feel very confident you
can do the job right, So ask me as many
questions as you as you need so you're ninety five
percent confident in getting the job done well.

Speaker 1 (05:20):
So what kind of questions does the AI tend to
ask when we use this technique.

Speaker 2 (05:26):
It's a blend of kind of one oh one questions
and really detailed ones, so it's clarifying on the goals
and things like audience and things like that. It'll ask,
but it will also ask particular specific things about the
topic you've got. So if it's a sales style example
we're going through, for example, it will ask questions on

(05:48):
the client, the client's problem. It'll may ask questions on
the budget, even those kind of things, because it wants
to have a full basis of all the background so
it can give you the best result.

Speaker 1 (06:00):
What happens if the AI asks me a question that
I just don't know how to answer, what should I do?

Speaker 2 (06:06):
Yeah, you got two choices there. One is you can
say I'm not sure and that's enough and that's fine,
there's no problems with that. The other one I use
a lot is I'm not sure, but I would like
some suggestions on different avenues. We can go here, and
I want you to give me those suggestions, and so
then it'll know that it has another conversation and other
round of questions and answers for you.

Speaker 1 (06:27):
So is it important to add specific areas for the
AI to probe, like, you know, around what's my brand
voice or industry terminology for example. That's up to you.

Speaker 2 (06:40):
I'd say that for probably fifty percent of the time,
I just say the ninety five percent confidence and that's enough.
But other times, when I'm working on something very specific,
I will get it to do questions in a very
specific area, particularly if i'm so if it's a deep analysis,
then it might be I want you to ask questions
in this particular direction so I know that I've got

(07:02):
the analysis right. So or it might be for writing
it will be very much on the style or tone,
making sure that that matches my audience, those kind of things.

Speaker 1 (07:11):
And is there a limit to how many rounds of
Q and A we should go through or like, you know,
because I feel like I could just keep refining and
refining until we hit that ninety five percent confidence level.
But how many rounds am I going through?

Speaker 2 (07:25):
Up to you, And it really depends on the work
you're doing. What I've found is that a lot of
the Jenai will just ask that one round of questions,
you answer it, and then it'll just go great and done.
What I've found is if I get the responses back
from the Jenai and I've got a bit of a
gut feeling that potentially it may not know everything, or

(07:45):
potentially it might be going in a different direction, what
I'll do then I'll say, do you have any more questions?
So it's actually you need to prompt it more to
ask you questions that it's unlikely that it'll just want
to ask questions forever and ever. So it's more of
a work hard to get more questions than get fewer.

Speaker 1 (08:03):
Okay, So for someone listening today who wants to try
this technique, what is one simple way to just get started.

Speaker 2 (08:10):
Yeah, ask your prompt, and then at the bottom of
you prompt, just the normal prompt you'd put in, So
don't worry about the prompt, just do your normal work there,
and then at the bottom you say, before you respond,
ask me any questions you've got until you're ninety five
percent confident in doing a great job. That's it.

Speaker 1 (08:26):
I love that and I personally use this technique multiple
times a day. It's completely transformed how I use Jenai.
So I hope that for people listening that you have
the confidence now to try and apply this today. If
you're keen to learn even more Genai tricks and hacks,

(08:47):
check out Inventium's Genai Productivity System. It's a self faced
course to transform you from a Jenai dabbler to jenaipro
in just a few hours. Head to inventium dot com
a forward slash jnai to check it out and get
started today. If you like today's show, make sure you

(09:07):
hit follow on your podcast app to be alerted when
new episodes drop. How I Work was recorded on the
traditional land of the Warrangery people, part of the kul
And Nation. A big thank you to Martin Nimber for
doing the sound mix,