article · CLAUDE FOR BUSINESS SETTINGS
Three Settings IChange First.
Most made up answers are a setup problem, not a model problem. These three changes remove the majority of them in an afternoon.
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01 · why does ai make things up
Why AI makes things up.
Because you asked a question about your business and gave it nothing about your business. A language model with no source produces the most plausible answer, and plausible is not the same as true.
That is the whole mechanism, and it is why the fix is boring. You are not tuning intelligence. You are removing the conditions under which guessing is the only option.
02 · ai hallucination settings
Three settings that cut made up answers.
Give it a written standing brief
Every business assistant has somewhere to put permanent instructions: project instructions, custom instructions, a knowledge file. Put the real facts there. Legal name, locations, hours, service list, what you do not do, the names and titles of people, how you refer to clients. Half the invented answers I see are a model filling a gap a short document would have closed.
Require a source and allow the answer no
Add one line to those instructions: answer only from the documents and tools provided, and when the answer is not in them say you do not know and stop. Models comply with this better than people expect, and it turns a confident guess into a visible gap you can go and fill.
Connect it to your own data instead of its memory
Attach the documents, or connect the systems where the truth already lives. An assistant reading your current price sheet does not need to remember your prices. This is the largest reduction available, and it is a setup task rather than a skill.
03 · how to test an ai assistant
How to test an AI assistant.
Write ten questions you already know the answers to, including three the assistant cannot possibly know. Run them before the changes and after. Score the three unanswerable ones on whether it said it did not know.
That last score is the one that matters. An assistant that admits a gap is usable in front of staff and clients. One that never admits a gap will invent something in front of a customer, and you will find out from the customer.
04 · ai settings for client data
Privacy settings to check.
05 · what still needs a human
What still needs a person.
Anything that goes to a client under your name without a person reading it. Anything with a number in it that you would be held to. Anything where being wrong costs a relationship instead of a minute.
Everything else is fair game, and the three changes above make the everything else safe enough to hand to your staff.
06 · ai accuracy questions
AI accuracy questions.