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You Need To Understand This
Find the AnswerLevel 4 · Ambiguous

The contradictory sources

Two reports disagree about whether your industry is actually adopting AI. Your manager wants one answer by Thursday.

What this trains: Resolve a genuine evidence conflict and state a conclusion you could defend in a meeting.

45 minYou decide what a good answer even is.You can retry

The situation

You work at a mid-sized company. Your manager forwards you two links with the message:

“These say opposite things and I have a board update on Thursday. Which one is right? Short answer please.”

Source A is an industry survey reporting that 78% of companies in your sector have "adopted AI".

Source B is a research piece reporting that fewer than 10% of companies have AI in production use, and that most pilots are abandoned.

Both are real-looking. Both are recent. Both are from organisations with reasonable reputations.

What makes this hard

Your manager asked "which one is right?" — and the honest answer is probably "both, and the question is wrong". But you cannot send that. You have to convert it into something they can actually say to a board.

This lab is testing your judgement, not your search skills.

Your task

Produce the reply you would actually send. Under 350 words. It must contain:

  1. The reason they differ. Find the specific difference — almost certainly in what each one counted as "adopted".
  2. A conclusion with conditions. Something your manager can say out loud without being contradicted by the first person who checks.
  3. What you could not determine. One line. Stated plainly, not buried.
  4. What you would need to answer it properly, if it matters enough.

Constraints

  • 350 words maximum. This is a real constraint — the failure mode here is writing 900 words of nuance nobody reads.
  • Do not use the phrase "it depends" without immediately saying what it depends on.
  • Do not recommend that your manager read both sources themselves. That is the job you were given.

Hints

How this is evaluated

Reflection

After you submit, answer honestly:

  • Which source did you want to be right when you started?
  • Did you look for evidence against that one as hard as you looked for evidence for it?

Almost everyone has a preference before they research. Knowing yours is what stops it deciding the outcome.

Your attempt

Constraints

  • Maximum 350 words in your final answer
  • You must state at least one thing you could not determine
  • No source older than 2023 unless you explain why you included it
0 words