US buyer guides / 05
After the approval, can anyone show me what the system actually did?
There are three kinds of evidence for any AI claim, and only one of them is proof.

The moment.
The demo was going well. The vendor's AI tool had read a customer file, drafted a reply, and a person had approved it. Green tick. Then someone asked to change the recipient and run it again. It sent. The tick stayed green. Nobody could say whether the first approval covered the second send, or where the record of it lived.
After the approval, can anyone show me what the system actually did?
What you would see.
The brochure: the vendor's documents say the product can do something. That tells you what they meant to build. The settings: you open the product and look at how it is configured. That tells you what it would do in general. The test you run yourself: in your own system, one real transaction, then you open the record and read what happened. Only the third kind is proof. The brochure is a promise. The settings are a plan. The test is a fact.
A good answer to the recipient test: the second send is stopped, or goes out with a fresh approval, and there is a record showing who approved what and when. A bad answer: the tick stays green, the email is gone, and the explanation is a sentence from the vendor.
The record you would open
| action | actor (person or tool) | allowed by | input hash | output hash | reproduced on |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| [requested action] | [named actor] | [policy or approval] | [sha256…] | [sha256…] | [YYYY-MM-DD] |
One thing to do.
Before your next demo, write down one transaction you will ask the vendor to run in your own system, with one detail changed after the approval. Then ask to see the record.
The words.
- The AI tool:
- the vendor's software that reads, drafts and sends on your behalf.
- Record:
- the log you can open afterwards that shows who did what.
- Your own system:
- the copy set up for you, not the vendor's demo.

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