What AI Gets Right And Humans Still Get Wrong

The fastest way to lose a lead is to ask a question that sounds reasonable but is impossible to answer. We start with a real example from building an interactive pool pricing estimator: “How many square feet do you want your pool to be?” It is the perfect unit for the builder’s pricing math and the worst possible unit for the buyer’s brain. If you have ever watched people abandon a quote request form and wondered why, this is the pattern hiding in plain sight. 

We walk through the false fixes too, like switching to gallons because it feels more “pool related.” If someone has never owned a pool, they do not know gallons any more than they know square footage. The breakthrough is simple and practical: ask in the language people actually use out loud. For pools, that means dimensions like 16 by 32, then quietly translate that into the internal variables your estimator needs. You get better form completion rates, a smoother user experience, and cleaner lead generation without changing your pricing model. 

Then we zoom out to the AI lesson. AI will reliably hand you the technically correct question because it is defensible and matches the data. The humanly correct question requires customer context, the kind you only get from sales calls and real conversations. We close with a rule you can use on any intake form: could someone answer it at a dinner table without looking anything up? If not, rewrite it. Subscribe for more practical takes on conversion rate optimization, better UX writing, and using AI intentionally, and if this helped, share it and leave a quick review.

If this sparked ideas for your brand or business, subscribe for more deep dives, share the show with a founder who needs focus, and leave a quick review to help others find it. Ready to explore your own AI-hosted podcast and growth system? Head to www.intentionallyinspirational.com, hit the blue button, and book a call with the human version of Jason Wright.

Transcript

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A Terrible But Reasonable Question

SPEAKER_00 0:00

What's happening everyone? Jason right here. Georgia, I want to start with a question that seems completely reasonable and is actually terrible.

SPEAKER_01 0:07

Alright, hit me.

SPEAKER_00 0:08

How many square feet do you want your pool to be?

SPEAKER_01 0:11

I have absolutely no idea.

SPEAKER_00 0:12

And that's the whole episode.

Building A Pool Price Estimator

SPEAKER_00 0:14

I was building an interactive estimator for a pool company. Somebody answers questions about the pool they're picturing and gets a real dollar figure at the end. So we need to know how big. And square footage is the correct unit. It's what the pricing math runs on, it's what the builder uses. It's technically the right

Why Square Feet Fails Buyers

SPEAKER_00 0:32

question.

SPEAKER_01 0:32

And completely useless to the person answering it.

SPEAKER_00 0:36

Completely useless. Nobody shopping for a pool has ever thought about their pool in square feet.

Gallons Sounds Better But Still Fails

SPEAKER_01 0:41

So what did you try instead?

SPEAKER_00 0:42

Gallons at first. Which sounds better because people who own pools do know they're gallons.

SPEAKER_01 0:48

But somebody shopping for one doesn't own one yet.

SPEAKER_00 0:50

That's the trap I almost walked into. I know my own pool is fourteen thousand five hundred gallons because I've been buying chemicals for it for years. Somebody who's never had a pool has never once needed that number.

SPEAKER_01 1:03

So what's the question people can actually

The Answer People Can Say

SPEAKER_01 1:05

answer?

SPEAKER_00 1:05

Dimensions. 16 by 32. That's how pools are sold. That's how they're talked about at a cookout. That's what a person actually says out loud. And underneath it, the math still runs on square footage. They just never see that part.

Why AI Defaults To Technical Correctness

SPEAKER_01 1:20

I want to poke at something here though. AI built most of this thing with you, and it kept handing you the technically correct question. So why does it keep doing that?

SPEAKER_00 1:29

I think because a question that's technically correct is defensible, and a question that's humanly correct requires knowing something about the human. Square feet is right. It's just right for the builder, not for the buyer. And there's nothing in the data that tells you which one is filling out the form.

SPEAKER_01 1:46

Unless you tell it.

SPEAKER_00 1:47

Unless you tell it. Which is the actual job. And I only knew to tell it because I've sat on calls with people trying to describe what they want and heard how they talk about it.

SPEAKER_01 1:57

Here's what I'd want people to take from that.

The Dinner Table Test For Forms

SPEAKER_01 2:00

This isn't really about AI. Every form on the internet has this problem. Businesses ask questions in their own internal language and then wonder why nobody finishes.

SPEAKER_00 2:10

That's true and it's everywhere. Square footage on a remodel form. Zone count on an irrigation quote, nobody knows.

SPEAKER_01 2:18

So the test is pretty simple. Could the person answer that out loud at a dinner table without looking anything up?

SPEAKER_00 2:25

That's a good test, and an uncomfortable one, because a lot of forms fail it immediately. So here's my takeaway. AI will give you the correct question every time. Whether a real person can answer it is a completely different question, and that one still takes somebody who's actually talked to a customer.

SPEAKER_01 2:42

Alright, I'm keeping

Checklist Giveaway And Closing

SPEAKER_01 2:44

that one.

SPEAKER_00 2:44

One quick thing before you go if your calendar isn't as full as you'd like it to be, the problem usually isn't your marketing, it's your offer. I put together a free one page checklist for you. It covers twelve things your offer needs before you spend another dime on ads or another six months on content. Head over to high ticketchecklist.com and grab it. It takes about two minutes to score yourself and you'll know exactly where the leaks are. Thanks for riding along today.

SPEAKER_01 3:11

Thanks everyone.

SPEAKER_00 3:12

We'll see you in the next one. Stay curious and stay intentional with AI and your business.