127 | Informed Intuition in the Age of AI: How to Learn, Explore, and Stay Smart
Using Mustafa Suleyman's advice to build AI savvy and stay ahead of hallucinations
Back in the early 1990s, I came up with a phrase I thought I had invented all by myself: informed intuition. It described those moments when I made decisions that felt instinctive but were really grounded in deep, often subconscious experience. Turns out, I wasn't the first to think of it (a quick search today revealed plenty of use!), but the concept still resonates. And recently, it’s taken on a new life in the world of generative AI.
I was reminded of it while listening to a fascinating interview with Mustafa Suleyman, CEO of Microsoft AI, on the AI Applied podcast hosted by Jaeden Schafer and Conor Grennan.1 Suleyman shared a simple, actionable piece of advice for those new to AI:
Pick a topic you know really well and start exploring it with an AI chatbot2
This method isn’t just about curiosity. Suleyman emphasized that getting familiar with AI through topics you already understand is a foundational step toward harnessing its power wisely. It helps build not just comfort, but discernment.
Why? Because you’ll quickly learn two things:
What new insights the AI can surface.
Where and how it gets things wrong.
That exploration sets the stage for what I call “AI-informed intuition”—a kind of mental radar you develop through experience. It’s about learning not just what the AI says, but when you can trust it.
The Hallucination Achilles Heel
For StrefaTECH readers, hallucinations are old news (it’s something I mention a lot!)—but still very real. A hallucination is when an AI makes something up but presents it as fact. Sometimes it’s obvious (“Mazda 6 will get you to the moon in 160 days”—yes, that happened), and sometimes it’s sneaky: close enough to seem right, but still incorrect.
Even the best large language models—GPT-4o, Claude, Gemin—are prone to this. That’s why Suleyman’s advice matters: working with a topic you know well helps you calibrate. You’ll spot the nonsense quickly. And that practice builds the kind of mental muscle you’ll need when exploring less familiar territory.
What Is Informed Intuition?
It’s the quick, seemingly instinctive judgment that’s actually grounded in real knowledge and experience. Think of a chef who can tell something’s “off” in a dish before even tasting it. Or a teacher who senses a student didn’t write their own paper, even without clear evidence. It’s not magic—it’s pattern recognition honed over time.
With AI, informed intuition becomes your compass. After dozens of conversations with a chatbot about your area of expertise—gardening, spreadsheets, nonprofit marketing, you name it—you begin to see patterns in how it responds. You know when it’s solid. You know when it’s shaky. That knowledge is priceless.
A Challenge: Try It Yourself
Even if you’ve been using AI tools for a while and feel pretty comfortable with them, this exercise isn’t just for beginners. You may be in the "AI danger zone"3 without realizing it—confident enough to stop questioning, but still vulnerable to subtle hallucinations. Think of it like exercising muscles you haven't used in a while: a focused session exploring a familiar topic can help sharpen your intuition for when to dig deeper. Sometimes, it's only through deliberate practice that we build the strength to spot the misleading answers that might otherwise slip past our mental filters.
To put this into action, pick something you know well. Maybe even something you could teach. Spend 15 minutes peppering an AI tool with questions—basic ones, obscure ones, speculative ones. Then evaluate the answers:
What surprised you?
What did it miss?
Where was it confident but wrong?
Where did it open new doors?
Try it with more than one chatbot. You’ll see differences. And slowly but surely, you’ll build that intuition.
Why This Matters
Generative AI is reshaping how we interact with information. It’s tempting to lean on it too heavily, to trust what it says just because it says it smoothly. But your informed intuition—sharpened by experience, context, and deliberate practice—is the best antidote to blind trust.
So go ahead: explore what you know. Poke at it. Question it. And let that growing intuition guide your future AI adventures.
And until next time,
Make Good Choices.
Podcast: Microsoft AI CEO, Mustafa Suleyman on Building the Future of AI.
Which app? Try the one you have the most experience with, and then perhaps try one other. If you’re new, the free plans of ChatGPT and Gemini are good options — easy to use and have access to the internet (in case you ask questions that require recent info).
Revisit the recent StrefaTECH article https://strefatech.substack.com/p/124-the-ai-danger-zone?r=2i62w7!