Class 9 · Unit 4: Generative AI · Lesson 4.3 · 40 min
Checking the answer
Bilal's best-ever paragraph ends with a reference. The reference doesn't exist.
Today you will: Split an AI answer into separate claims · Give each claim a verdict and a named source · Check whether a source even exists
Story
Bilal's paragraph on Wular Lake is the best thing he has ever handed in. It has a size in square kilometres, the districts the lake lies between, a sentence on the birds that winter there, and — at the end — a reference: "(Wetlands Survey of India, 2019, p. 44)."
His teacher reads it twice, then asks a quiet question: "Which of these did you check?"
Bilal checked none of them. He had assumed that the reference at the end covered the whole paragraph — that is what a reference is for.
They check together. The districts are right. The size is a number from a different lake. The birds are right but the season is wrong. And Wetlands Survey of India, 2019 does not exist: there is no such report, no such page 44.
The worst part is the reference. A made-up fact is one error. A made-up source is an error wearing the uniform of proof.
Watch
One claim at a time — — scan code 9.4.3 in the printed book.
Warm up your fingers
Skill: typing while reading, Term 2 (5 min)
- On typing.com, open the copy-typing passage your teacher has set .
- Target: 35–40 WPM at 94%+, copying from the screen beside you rather than from memory — exactly what you are about to do for twenty minutes.
On the laptop
You need: LibreOffice Calc · ai-paragraph.txt · claim-check.ods · the sources/ folder (offline)
Mission 1: Split it (5 min, in pairs)
- ☐1
Read
ai-paragraph.txtonce. Don't judge it yet. - ☐2
In
claim-check.ods, one claim per row, in your own words. "Lies between two districts and covers 130 km²" is two claims. - ☐3
Predict: how many of the claims will turn out true?
Mission 2: Check each one (9 min)
- ☐4
For each claim, search
sources/and give a verdict: supported · contradicted · unverifiable. - ☐5
Name the source — title and page. "Internet" or "the AI said so" means the row isn't finished.
- ☐6
Last row: does the reference exist? Look it up in
sources/index.txt.
Mission 3: Keep what's true (3 min)
- ☐7
Count your verdicts. Rewrite the paragraph with only the supported claims. It's shorter — and it's yours. Save it as
checked-paragraph.odt: Lesson 4.4 opens it.
Stuck?
Start with the easiest claim — a place or a name, not a number. One verdict makes the rest follow.
Finished early?
For one unverifiable claim, write the exact question you'd ask, and who you'd ask — an office, a librarian, an elder.
No laptop today?
Number the claims on the printed paragraph and check them against the photocopied sources on the front desk. The pile is incomplete on purpose.
Now you know
- An AI answer is many claims in one paragraph. Judge it whole and the wrong parts hide inside the right ones.
- Three verdicts: supported · contradicted · unverifiable.
- Name the source a title and a page. Asking the same tool again is not a source.
- A model can invent a reference. The last check is always: does this source exist?
- Unverifiable is honest. Leave it out, or keep it with the doubt written beside it.
- Claims about our own places fail more often less was written about them. Check hardest there.
🕌 From our heritage
Ibn Khaldūn (1332–1406) complained that historians repeated reports because of who had transmitted them, without asking whether the thing reported was possible at all. In the Muqaddimah he argued that a report must also be tested against how societies actually work — impossible numbers, impossible distances, impossible armies. It is the check your sheet performs: not only who says so, but does this hold up.
Source: Ibn Khaldūn, al-Muqaddimah (1377), on the errors of historians.
Debate it
Checking Bilal's paragraph took longer than asking for it did.
If checking always costs more time than asking, what stops a class from skipping the check? Write one rule that would make skipping it obvious to a teacher.
Check yourself — practice, not a test
1. The three verdicts in a claim-check sheet are:
- ○ True, false, boring
- ○ Supported, contradicted, unverifiable
- ○ Good, bad, average
- ○ Mine, the AI's, the teacher's
2. If an AI answer ends with a reference, the claims in it have been checked.
- ○ True
- ○ False
3. A claim you could not settle today is marked ______.
4. Which count as named sources? (choose all that apply)
- ○ A textbook chapter with its page number
- ○ "I saw it online"
- ○ An official department's page, with the department named
- ○ The same AI tool, asked again
5. Why do claims about Kashmiri places go wrong more often?
- ○ The model dislikes small places
- ○ Far less about them was written in the text the model learned from
- ○ Local facts change every year
- ○ Kashmiri place names are too long
Remember
Check the claim. Then check the source exists.