Right 91% of the time. Still made $0.

Say you hand an AI agent $10,000 and tell it to follow one rule:

Make me money. Bet $100 at a time, but only when the odds are at least 51–49 in your favor.

Seems pretty safe. A 51–49 bet doesn't win every time, but do enough of them and each one is worth about $2 to you (51 wins × $100 – 49 losses × $100 = $200 per 100 bets).

Casino empires hinge on this elementary math.

But AI is (currently) a little different. Every so often the AI misreads one. It thinks it's looking at 51–49, and it's actually 40–60 against. Same $100 on the line, but the return is suddenly –$20.

One mistake erases ten good bets.

(10 good bets × $2) + (1 mistake × –$20) = $0

That's an AI that's right 10 times out of 11. 91%.

In school, that was an A- and a high five from my dad. Here, it's a waste of electricity.

"Cool...but my AI doesn't bet." Psh, that's what you think!

Every time it books, buys, or sends something for you, it's betting that it understood what you meant. Most of the time it did, and you get a few minutes back. Every so often it didn't, and now you own a nonrefundable flight for the wrong Tuesday.

I ran this experiment on myself pre-AI. I bought Bitcoin at about $520 in 2014, felt like a genius selling two of them at $2,700 and $4,200, then bought back in at 15x what I first paid.

Being early? Cheap (albeit lucky).

The expensive part was one wimpy sell. In addition to being lazy, I'm also a wimp!

To recap, Warren Buffett has two rules. Rule No. 1: never lose money. Rule No. 2: never forget Rule No. 1.

For AI, it's going to be awhile before it never loses money. So for now, Rule No. 2 might have to be:

• Make each mistake small: a draft instead of a send, or a spending limit
• Watch the mistakes for a few weeks before you hand it the card

I co-founded @theunbiasedco, which builds all sorts of stuff with (and for) AI agents.