I recall hearing once long ago that trust is like a bank account with one distinct difference. If you think of telling the truth as one unit of savings, a lie counts as four units of spending. Put another way, every time you "lie" you have to tell four truths to get back to even.

What does this have to do with data management? Every time your staff queries the database and gets an answer that they perceive as "wrong," that's a version of a lie. The distrust of the data begins. And they'll have to see a lot "truth" from the database to overcome that lie. This is why data integrity is so critical (as well as knowing how to write queries correctly!).

Querying your database with AI (artificial intelligence) is coming soon. With AI querying you'll be able to ask in simple language "How many members do I have?" and the system will provide an answer for you.

But there's a catch. Right now, AI suffers from "AI hallucinations." AI hallucination is when artificial intelligence generates images, sounds, or text that seem real but aren't based on actual data. It's like a computer dreaming up things that don't exist, sometimes producing bizarre or surreal results.*

For those already skeptical of AI, this is going to add another (understandable) layer of skepticism. Presumably this issue will go away, but until it does, expect even more distrust of your data!

*This definition of AI hallucination was generated by ChatGPT, the first time I've used AI in this newsletter. (I think this is also the first footnote I've put in this newsletter!)