As a user of any large language model (LLM), you’ll face annoyances on an almost daily basis. From making things up, to seemingly refusing to obey instructions, to making mistakes that are hard to believe—it can be exhausting. There are serious hallucinations that can cause real damage in high-stakes situations, and sycophancy is another big time waster, other than being dangerous at times. But one of the most common problems in working with an AI chatbot is the error loop.
The AI just gets something incorrectly, and no matter how many times you try to correct or tweak it, it just does it wrong all over again.
There’s no point arguing with an AI, but there are a few workarounds worth trying to end up with the result you’re looking for—and preserve your sanity.
Intelligence gets stuck
A friend of mine recently spent the better part of two days trying to get the recording from a meeting with multiple speakers present, transcribed. He gave the job to an AI chat assistant, which happily began on the task. Hour after hour passed, but the chat assistant kept saying it was “still working on it”. But it probably wasn’t. Always look for the virtual power button that shows whether the chatbot is actually working on something.
The chat assistant was extremely apologetic. It assured him he was absolutely right—of course—and that it had gone down the wrong path with this task, but was now fixing things. In reality, it had got stuck in an error loop. A full 24 hours went by in sheer frustration.
My friend shouldn’t have persisted, and definitely shouldn’t have argued with the chatbot, which kept coming back with abject apologies. He should have simply started afresh. But like a teacher patiently instructing a student, he explained and re-explained what needed to be done, wasting his own valuable time and steadily raising his blood pressure.
I suggested he give the job to another AI chat assistant. It was done in five minutes. All AI assistants make mistakes, but it was essential to start afresh in an environment with no memory of the botched task.
AI doesn’t know it’s off track
Actually, a chat assistant doesn’t even know it’s made a mistake. The number of instances when I have been given a response that seems as if the chatbot doesn’t know we are in 2026. When caught in a temporal glitch, it just side-steps and apologizes.
What users need to remember is that an AI assistant is a predictive engine, not a reasoning, thinking, sentient being. It has no immediate real-time access to information and works with its existing training, as well as sheer prediction. You can scold it, but it won’t feel hurt or sulk and correct its course. It will politely tell you you’re absolutely right and do the job incorrectly again.
The AI actually just tries the failed plan again and again without making real progress. From your side, it feels like talking to someone who has latched on to one narrow interpretation and can’t let go.
It’s at this point that a hard reset is the best way out. Start a new chat, or if you think the AI is using too much of what it remembers about you and your task, head to another chat assistant. They all do offer free tiers, so you can try your luck. The quicker you do this, the more time you’ll save and the more productive you’ll be.
A big mental typo
Recently, spooked by the Nipah virus, I asked an AI chatbot for a deep research report on it. But what I received after a wait of five minutes was a report on the Union budget, of which I had had enough. Out of curiosity, I asked it to look at the response and explain how it came about. That was a classic example of a few AI mental typos, happening all at once!
The chatbot said: “It really boils down to three things: a pattern-matching glitch, data overload, and a bad error loop. AI models like me don’t actually ‘know’ things in the way humans do; we predict the most likely next word based on patterns we’ve seen. Since today’s date is 1 February 2026—the day the Union budget is released—my system was flooded with a massive amount of fresh, detailed information about Indian finance. I likely saw that mountain of ‘expert’ data and mistakenly latched onto it as the most important pattern to follow, which caused me to ignore your actual instructions. Once I started writing that first page about the budget, I got stuck in a loop.”
The New Normal: The world is at an inflexion point. Artificial intelligence (AI) is set to be as massive a revolution as the Internet has been. The option to just stay away from AI will not be available to most people, as all the tech we use takes the AI route. This column series introduces AI to the non-techie in an easy and relatable way, aiming to demystify and help a user to actually put the technology to good use in everyday life.
Mala Bhargava is most often described as a ‘veteran’ writer who has contributed to several publications in India since 1995. Her domain is personal tech, and she writes to simplify and demystify technology for a non-techie audience.
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