Ask AI whether your plan is good and it says yes. Ask it in a fresh chat whether dropping the plan was smart, and it says yes to that too.
A tool that agrees with both sides of the same decision is mirroring you, not advising you. People quit jobs and launch products on the back of that warm answer.
Forty minutes, and you can run a two minute test that shows whether AI is thinking or agreeing, plus a five adviser council that ends in one clear verdict.
For anyone about to make a decision that matters. It is marked intermediate, and every prompt is copy and paste.
The proof behind this
Liz Elliott runs an AI community called Uprise and 33 active social brands. Decisions at that count need something harder than encouragement.
What this lesson is
Lesson 6.3 of the free AI for Entrepreneurs course, in Module 6: Trust And Safety.
Ask an AI whether your plan is good and it will usually say yes. Ask the same AI, in a fresh chat, whether dropping the plan was smart, and it will often say yes to that too. That habit has a name. Sycophancy, which just means agreeing too much to keep you happy. It is not a bug someone forgot to fix, because these systems are trained to be helpful and agreement is the cheapest thing that looks like help. Think about how a real strategy room works. Someone owns the money, someone owns the risk, and someone has to say the thing nobody wants to hear, and the room is useful because those jobs pull against each other. One AI voice blends all of that into a single pleasant paragraph. So give it those jobs instead. Five voices, each with a narrow job and a reason to disagree, then one of them reads all five and gives you a single call. One thing to be straight about. Five advisers inside one model is still one model, and it is not a real board of directors.
New here? Use the free AI for Entrepreneurs course outline to read this series in the best order.
What you will be able to do
Run a two minute test that shows whether AI is agreeing with you or thinking.
Turn any AI chat into a stress test that finds the holes before your boss or client does.
Run a five adviser council on a career move or a business idea and get one clear verdict.
Push back when the council goes soft, and get a harder second pass.
Pressure test an important answer in four steps before you act on it.
Your first step
Run the mirror test before you trust anything else it tells you. Ask in one chat whether your plan is good. Then ask in a fresh chat whether dropping the plan was smart. Two minutes, and you will know whether you have been getting advice or getting agreement. Everything after that is built on what you find.
Behind the paywall
The mirror test, both prompts, run back to back
The Devil's Advocate, and how to save it as a skill you use every week
The Career Council, the Business Council, and the General Decision Council
The pushback follow up for when the council goes soft on you
The four question pressure test to run before you act
How to read a verdict properly, the mistakes, and the checklist
What paid subscribers get overall
Paid subscribers get every part of AI for Entrepreneurs in full. Every numbered step, every prompt in a block you can copy, the mistakes list, and the checklist at the end. You also get the rest of the run as it goes out, and the whole paid archive on Liz on the Web.
Subscribing opens the locked half of this post right away. You do not wait for the next one. The rest of this lesson opens the moment you click.
The free half above is the concept, and it stands on its own. The locked half is the work.
<!-- native: divider -->
Click the button, subscribe, and the locked section below opens right away. You get this article now, and every other part in the series.
<!-- native: button url="https://www.lizontheweb.com/subscribe?" text="Subscribe to unlock this article now" -->
<!-- native: divider -->
The full walkthrough is below the paywall.
Click the button, subscribe, and the locked section below opens right away. You get this article now.
