Before You Trust AI, Give It a Referee

The New Physician: Today’s Difficult Problem · Sep 5, 2026 · 9m

AI can give you a polished, confident answer and still be wrong.

The question is not just whether the AI sounds intelligent. It is:

What checks the work before the answer creates a real consequence?

I think of that check as a referee.

If an AI reads an invoice, the referee might be the purchase order, the receipt, and the arithmetic.

If it answers a policy question, the referee is the current approved policy, not merely a real link to an outdated version.

If it runs a website workflow, the referee may simply be the test: click the button, submit the form, and confirm that the result actually…