If you’ve been following the news, you’ve likely noticed the conversation around artificial intelligence shift from “datacenters are bad” to “AI will lead to extinction.” For communications professionals, it can be difficult to know what to make of all this. AI is increasingly part of how we work, from drafting content and analyzing sentiment to developing strategy and managing internal communications. But how much of the alarm is warranted, and what should we actually be paying attention to?

Have you ever tried to solve a complex issue with a chatbot, only to watch it devolve into nonsense? After a handful of turns, the model starts losing the plot; forgetting details, erasing nuance, and becoming increasingly inaccurate. Yet, it maintains a deceptive confidence as the workflow quietly collapses. This isn’t user error. It’s a structural mismatch between how LLMs process information and how complex workflows operate.

AI can sound incredibly confident even when it's completely wrong. In this article, Aaron Maisler breaks down why hallucinations happen, what "grounding" actually means, and the practical steps you can take to make AI outputs more reliable without blindly trusting every response.

This week, we're excited to welcome Aaron Maisler to The Slice for his first blog! As our resident tech expert, he's breaking down how to get more out of AI by using the right frameworks, asking better questions, and understanding where AI can help (and where it can't). If you've ever wondered whether you're really using AI to its full potential, this one's for you.