Hey, it’s Marek.

I gave Claude the same draft, the same prompt, and the same checklist. Twice. In one conversation, it said don’t publish. The other said, “Ship it”. Both were confident. Both were rigorous. And both were right. Each was responding to a question it had silently interpreted differently.

I call this the Precise Misread, and a new study from UT Dallas demonstrated it at scale: 150 AI agents, same financial data, same question. Ninety said volume grew. Sixty said it declined. Near-perfect agreement within each group. The split happened before the work even started.

In this episode, I get into why “just write better prompts” is a catch-22, what a CEO of a financial firm taught me about the value of ambiguity, and two practical fixes you can use this week.

One more thing: you might notice something different about this episode. My son Filip is now producing music for the podcast, joining my daughter Zofia, who’s been editing for several weeks. Family operation!

Stay curious!

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit marekkowal.substack.com