What We’re All Getting Wrong About AI: A Reality Check for 2026

Based on the latest legal forecasts and expert surveys, here are four truths about AI 

that might surprise you.

1. The Trap of "Auto-Pilot" Thinking

There is a strange paradox I’ve noticed: the more you trust an AI to do a job, the less you actually think about what it’s doing. A survey from 2025 found that when people are super confident in their AI tools, they stop applying critical thinking.

On the flip side, if you are confident in your own skills, you actually use the AI better because you're constantly checking its work. It’s a bit like the "ironies of automation"—if we let the machine do all the routine stuff, we lose the very judgment we need to handle the hard cases. We’re moving from being "creators" to being "verifiers" and "stewards". If we aren't careful, we’re trading our intellectual sharpness for a bit of convenience.

2. Why "Less is More" When You’re Prompting

We used to think that "good" prompting meant giving the AI dozens of examples. But by 2026, the models have changed. For complex logic, giving the AI fewer clues actually makes it smarter.

When you give too many examples, the AI starts "copying" the patterns instead of "thinking" through the problem. For a multi-step logic puzzle, you’re often better off just saying, "Let’s think step by step," and letting the machine's native reasoning take over. It’s a hard habit to unlearn, but sometimes we just need to get out of the way.

3. The Legal Mess of "Agentic AI"

The real danger isn't some sci-fi robot takeover; it’s a lot more boring—and a lot more expensive. We now have "Agentic AI" that can sign contracts and make financial transactions on our behalf. But here’s the kicker: the law hasn't caught up. If your AI assistant signs a bad deal, who is responsible? You? The developer? Right now, the courts haven't given us a straight answer. We’re in a legal vacuum where businesses are deploying these agents without a clear safety net.

4. Keeping an "Audit Trail"

Since the legal side of things is so messy, having a "human in the loop" isn't enough anymore unless you can prove it. We all remember that 2023 case where lawyers got in trouble for using ChatGPT to fabricate court cases. https://www.msba.org/site/site/content/News-and-Publications/News/General-News/Massachusetts_Lawyer-Sanctioned_for_AI_Generated-Fictitious_Cases.aspx

To stay professional, you need a transparent "AI Audit Trail". This means keeping track of:

• The Tool: Exactly which version you used and when.

• The Prompt: The actual, unedited words you used.

• The Curation: A log of what you kept, what you threw away, and how you verified it.

At the end of the day, your judgment—not the algorithm's output—has to be the final word.

The Architect’s Choice

Whether we’re talking about the "Confidence Paradox" or the mess of legal liability, the message is the same: AI is a human challenge, not just a technical one. As this technology becomes the new "architecture" of how we find and use knowledge, we have a choice.

Are we going to just live in a structure someone else built, or are we going to be the architects of our own thinking? 

For information sake, I retired from the pratice of law in 2014.

This post was written with help from Google Gemini and NotebookLM and based on the following sources:

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