The parental leave summary (fictional)

A Brightwater HR coordinator asks an AI assistant: “Write a friendly summary of our parental leave policy for the intranet.” She does not attach the policy. The assistant produces a warm, well- organised summary stating that employees receive 16 weeks of fully paid leave from their first day. It is published.

The actual policy provides 12 weeks, and only after 12 months of service. Two employees plan around the summary before the error is noticed. HR has to correct the page, speak to both employees, and consider whether to honour what was published.

What failed.

• No grounding: the model was never given the policy, so it produced a typical-sounding one.

• No gap instruction: nothing told it to flag what it did not know.
• No verification: the specific numbers were not traced to the source.
• No owner approval and no line stating that the full policy governs.

The fix. A saved policy-summary template that requires the policy text, the gap instruction, a verification step and sign-off by the policy owner. With those in place the same task takes about 20 minutes and the error cannot occur in the same way.