When people think of AI as a full employee, they actually catch fewer of its mistakes. That's what the research shows. Because they trust it too much. A lot of people are just simply afraid to start with AI. It's not because they're not smart enough. It's really because they don't know how to use it and that creates fear. And every explanation that they get makes it sound like you need to be an engineer or some kind of computer geek to run AI. I mean, I run an AI engineering team for a living. And here's what I want you to unlearn right now. Just stop treating AI like a magic answer box that you're supposed to already know how to talk to. And start treating it like what it actually is. A smart new intern on their very first day. Smart, capable, but knows absolutely nothing about your business and the way you want to get things done. So this isn't about being scared of AI. It's that most people don't see how AI applies to their specific business. They don't really know what AI can do for them. They don't really trust that AI is going to get it right. And they're just worried that they're going to get exposed as somebody who's using AI instead of doing what they really should be doing. And, you know, this is a lot like doing business with an intern. You know, here's a fact you may not be aware of. Among businesses with fewer than five employees, 82% still say that AI isn't really applicable to their business. It's the single biggest reason they give for not adopting it ahead of cost or fear. This is from the SBA office on advocacy in 2025. Now, this is changing, but I think it's still pretty much true that business owners are busy running their business and they're not always great at really understanding what AI can actually do for them or how AI can do it. And they've got some fear around that. So this is not really a courage problem. It's really an onboarding problem. I see this every day in my day job, and that's exactly what this video fixes. A lot of people try it once. It's a shallow try and they stop. Here's the mental shift that changes everything. Just stop treating AI like it's supposed to already know your business. Start treating it like a smart new intern on their very first day. Smart, fast, capable of a lot of things, but they know absolutely nothing about you, your customers, how you do things, or how you talk. You already know how to onboard somebody like that. If you've got people in your business, you've done that over and over again for actual humans. Now, it's just a matter of doing it here. The next thing that I hear is, well, I don't know how to onboard an intern or AI. Look, let me give you three critical, actionable moves that you can use to get going on AI. Move number one, give context up front, just like you're briefing a new hire. Imagine a new hire walks in your door, the very first thing you're going to do after you say hello is tell them all about this amazing business that you built or that you work in. It would be completely natural for you to tell a new hire, hey, welcome, this is what our business does. This is our primary reason for being in business. And this is what our customers need. This is who they are. And this is how we're able to help them. And your role in helping me is going to be to do the following, whatever that's going to be. And usually what I tell people when they're just getting started is to give AI a simple task that they do over and over and over again, maybe that they really don't want to be doing over and over again, and to explain that task to AI just like they would an intern. I want you to write a social media post every day, and I want you to take it from these customer experiences or this particular thing. Of course, when a new intern writes that very first social media post, they're not going to be speaking in your voice. They're not going to understand the customer's language. They may not know the jargon for the industry. And what are you going to do? You're going to gently correct that intern, give them some previous examples, all of that kind of stuff. And the intern will get better and better at doing those social media posts. And eventually, you won't need to check the intern's work anymore. AI is exactly the same way. So move number one is to give it context, give it a briefing, tell it about your business. Move number two is to give it a single concrete task and work on that task. And move number three is just simply ask AI what it needs. I see this all the time in my day job. People ask me, how can I get Claude Code to do this thing? And my first response is, did you ask Claude Code what it needs to do that thing? And people say, well, no, I didn't think of that. It turns out that Claude or ChatGBT or Gemini will often tell you exactly what's needed in order to complete the task that you've asked it to do. So here's the really crazy twist. This intern idea is not my idea. And here's something that people don't generally know. The whole treat AI like an intern idea. The guy who came up with it, Ethan Mollick coined that phrase in 2023. And by 2024, he said it was too limiting and moved on to calling AI more like a coworker. So if Ethan has moved on, why am I still telling you to treat it like an intern? Because his audience has already graduated past day one. But I'm talking to you and you're just getting started trying to figure out how to really leverage AI in your business. And the intern model is exactly the right first rung of the ladder. You don't skip to coworker before you've done the onboarding of that coworker or the onboarding of that intern. So, yeah, when you get your intern going and it's doing a great job, we'll start treating that intern like a coworker. That's a later video. But right now, to get started on that new task, every time you start a new task with AI, I want you to treat it like an intern. Now, here's the honest caveat, and this is going to really help you. What do you do with interns and new hires? It's the old Ronald Reagan thing. Trust, but verify. The maxim is dovii, no provi. Trust, but verify. And there's real research on this, and it's worth knowing. When people think of AI as a full employee, they actually catch fewer of its mistakes. That's what the research shows. Because they trust it too much. And here's the fix. And it's not complicated at all. Use AI like you'd use a smart new intern, which means you still check the work. We've all had this happen. If you've ever had an intern, they do something amazing. But it's got some issues. And so you coach them and help them so that when they do that thing the next time, they'll do it better, and you won't have to worry about it so much. You wouldn't go out and take a brand new hire and let their work go out the door to the client unchecked. So don't do that with AI either. This trust, but verify idea is a really simple up level that you can use. And you'll know when you can start trusting AI more because more and more, not only will it be getting the right answer, it'll be getting better answers than you would have gotten given the time that you have to work on things. So here's the really crazy thing that happens. You know, a lot of times people want to talk about how AI can keep them from having to do stuff. But what happens with real interns? I tell you what happens with the interns that I coach. They bring new ideas and do things in ways that I never even imagined. Years ago, we had an intern come in and I asked them to automate some stuff. This was in the era before AI. So the closest thing we had to today's AI was interns. And when they approached the problem, they used an approach that we had never even considered. So imagine a room full of engineers. Here comes the intern applying something that they had seen somewhere else that we weren't even aware of to solve our problem. And you know what's great? That exact same thing will start to happen with AI. I can't tell you how many times in my own business I will ask AI to do something and AI will do a better job with that thing than I actually would have done myself. Just because AI has consumed the entirety of the internet. It's seen things that I haven't seen. It's spending time considering possibilities at lightning speed that not only did I not know to consider, I don't have time to work out all those possibilities. I'm usually in the mode of doing the thing that I know will work as quickly as possible. AI can be in the mode of considering all the possibilities, even the ones that I don't know about and actually do the thing the best possible way. And that is sort of like creativity. That's where AI can bring us some things as a smart intern that we wouldn't have gotten any other way. So, some key ideas for you. Number one, stop treating AI like a magic answer box. Start treating it like a smart new intern on the intern's very first day. Key idea number two, most small businesses haven't really touched AI in a meaningful way. If that's you, that's okay. Those small businesses say they don't see how it applies to them. And I think that's an onboarding problem you can solve by treating AI as a smart intern. Number three, the guy who came up with treat AI like an intern doesn't even use that framing anymore. That's crazy because it still works. What it is is step one in a journey that you're now on. And when you get to the point where you're ready to treat AI like a co-worker, I'll be there to help you with that too. Idea number four, you wouldn't let a brand new intern's work go straight to the customer right out the door unchecked. So, don't do that with AI. And don't be surprised and frustrated when you need to give AI a little bit of advice to get things right. Don't be afraid to do that. AI memory is getting better and better and that investment will compound and be totally worth the effort. And then finally, number five, be on the lookout for innovation and creativity in your AI. It's going to come up with things that you couldn't have come up with on your own. It's going to be good at things that you're not good at. That's going to level you up and that's going to level up your business. So, get started now. Go find a simple task and get your AI intern on the job today. Hey, thanks for listening to another episode of The Mark Mason Show. 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