Trusted sources make AI more useful

Use ChatGPT as a workspace, not the source of truth. When a task needs current, exact or reliable information, start with an authoritative record, a trusted file or web search. Then use AI to work with that material.

Choose the authority for each fact

Your company does not need one giant source for every question. Accounting may own posted balances, the ERP may own stock records, and a signed agreement may govern a customer’s terms. An approved policy has a named owner and effective date.

Create a source register: what it covers, where it lives, who owns it, who can see it and when it must be checked. See a practical source map.

Clean and organize before connecting

Remove duplicates, identify superseded files, label versions and record the scope of each document. Keep permissions attached to the information. A shared search index must not make restricted files visible to everyone.

Store important metadata such as title, source link, owner, effective date, review date and access group. Preserve enough context to interpret exceptions and conditions.

Retrieve the material needed for the job

A retrieval system finds relevant information and supplies it to the model. This is often called RAG. It is different from retraining the model.

For changing operational facts, use the authorized live system. For general current information, use web search and inspect the original source. Here, “search” means checking information online, not relying on model memory.

Handle missing or conflicting evidence

Specify which source wins when records disagree. If the system cannot resolve the conflict under those rules, it should flag the issue and ask the responsible person. It should not fill a gap with a plausible invention.

A hallucination is a plausible response that is not properly grounded in the right information. Source links help review, but the claim must actually follow from the linked material.

Keep the knowledge current

Agree on refresh rules, owners and review dates. Remove expired content from active retrieval. Test representative questions after a source update and record the source version used for important outputs.

Clear sources can reduce irrelevant context, repeated searching and review work. Measure those gains alongside extraction, storage, retrieval and maintenance costs rather than assuming a knowledge base is automatically cheaper.

Sources and further reading

Make it work in your business.

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