A chief complaint about AI is that it coddles users. It aims to please and tells you what you want to hear.
It’s true that AI’s supportive tendencies can make it seem like a sycophant.
It might praise you, reinforce your beliefs, and fail to criticize even your worst ideas. (There was an entire hilarious South Park episode about this.)
But if you are aware of these AI tendencies, you can push it in the opposite direction.
And when you push back on AI, that is when you will get some of the best output.
Arguing with AI pushes it past its initially bland and pleasing answers.
It prompts it to provide more complex, more thoughtful responses that help you:
- See from a new perspective
- Challenge your assumptions
- Develop more creative ideas
- Get feedback to improve your content, marketing, and business
How to Argue with AI
“Arguing with AI” doesn’t mean simply being rude to chatbots.
It means prompting chatbots to go beyond their first (and usually most generic) answer.
You can do that by asking AI chatbots to:
- Consider perspectives that are different from your own
- Point out your weak, stale, or bad ideas
- Explain its position and recommendations
- Share hesitations and counter-arguments
Arguing with AI turns your chatbot into an editor, business partner, or consultant that can challenge your thinking so you can improve your ideas.
You can also argue with AI as a way to practice your powers of persuasion and learn how to better speak to customers. You can prepare for the hesitations and pushback you may receive when sharing ideas, products, or positions with stakeholders.
Productive Arguments to Have with AI
If you aren’t sure how to argue productively with AI, here are a few examples.
Ask it to argue against itself. After you get a recommendation, ask: “Now argue the opposite. Why might this be the wrong call?” This will highlight risks the first answer may have glossed over.
Assign it a skeptical persona. Instead of, “Review my landing page,” try, “Review my landing page as a customer who’s been burned by a similar product before and doesn’t trust ads.” A named point of view produces sharper, less generic feedback than a neutral request.
Ask for the weakest part, not the whole review. “What’s good about this?” invites a list of compliments. “What’s the single weakest sentence in this email, and why?” forces the tool to evaluate instead of cheerlead.
Make it rank, not just react. Give it three taglines and ask it to rank them 1-3 with a reason for each, instead of asking, “Which do you like?” Ranking forces critique instead of vague praise.
Push past the first “yes.” If you ask, “Will this pricing work?” and get a reassuring answer, follow up with, “Give me three reasons a customer would say no to this price.” Treat the first response as round one, not the final word.
Make it defend its recommendation. Ask, “Why this and not the obvious alternative?” If AI can’t explain the reasoning, it likely gave you the most common answer rather than the most thoughtful one.
Set constraints on average output. “Write this without using the words innovative, seamless, or solutions.” Constraints force the tool off its default vocabulary, which is usually where the generic, forgettable copy was hiding.
Ask “what would a $500-an-hour consultant say?” Framing the ask around a specific level of expertise tends to pull more specific feedback than a plain, “What do you think?”
A Few Things to Keep In Mind
First, it’s worth remembering that AI can’t always give you an exact, correct perspective. Instead of arguing to find a singular truth, argue as a way to stress-test your ideas, sharpen your thinking, and discover new ways to approach problems.
Second, if you are asking questions about your brand, make sure you start by training AI. Use AI configurations to give AI foundational information about your business, customers, offerings, and industry. This training will help it develop more useful, more accurate responses. (If you need help building an AI Assistant trained on your unique brand, let’s talk.)
Now, let the debates begin!
To get started, pick one thing you already asked AI about this week and return to the chat to argue about it. One single follow-up question could unlock a new idea or perspective.
Let me know how it goes!
