TALAMANA · THE AI LITERACY MAP FOR ARCHITECTURE AND DESIGN · Studio Practice · AGE 17—20 · POSITIONAL · METHOD

Verify before you build on it

A claim without a source beside it does not enter the work.

When to use

Whenever an AI answer is about to enter something that carries weight: a site analysis, a drawing, a specification, a report, a jury presentation. Especially anything with a number, a rule, or a product name in it.

The method

Treat the answer as a lead, not a finding. Take each claim that matters and find the evidence that settles it. For a rule or a figure that is usually the primary document: the bye-law text itself, the municipal record, the standard. For a product it is the manufacturer's datasheet, read knowing the maker wrote it. For a scientific question a good review may be stronger than any single paper. Where no one source settles it, find two that do not copy each other. Write the source next to the claim. Keep your notes in two columns: verified, with a source; unverified, still unchecked. Nothing from the second column goes into the work. If a claim cannot be verified, it stays unchecked, and you say so where it appears.

Watch for this

Verifying by asking the same model again, or by asking a second model. That is a second guess, not a check. A check needs something outside the model: a document, a measurement, a person who would know.

The Lab's note

The two columns are the Lab's method, and we hold it strictly: a claim without a source beside it does not enter the work. It is not the only way to verify. Some studios check by sampling; some trust a retrieval system that quotes the document it read. We keep the columns because they make the unchecked visible, and because the cost of a wrong setback is a rebuild.

Try it

Ask a model three questions about the building bye-laws of your city — setbacks, floor area ratio, parking. Then find the actual bye-law document and check each answer. Sort the results: right, wrong, and right-for-a-different-city.

Prove it

Show one confident AI claim you caught by checking it against its source, and the two-column notes that kept it out of your work.

How it works

A model answering from its training produces the likeliest-sounding continuation, not a retrieved fact. The likeliest bye-law for "a city in Karnataka" can be an average of several cities' rules, and an average is not law. Systems with search or retrieval attached can quote real documents, and an answer drawn from a document you supplied is an extraction, not a guess. It still needs reading: a quoted page can be the wrong edition, a real-looking citation can point nowhere, and a primary source can be self-interested. Verification is not distrust of the tool. It is what lets you use the tool at all.

What this idea builds on

What this idea opens up

Sources

Open this idea on the map · The complete map · Logika · RBDS AI Lab, India · revised every edition.

Age grows from 11 at the centre to 22 at the edge, and six sectors show the learning strands. Tab into the map and the arrow keys step from idea to idea, following the links where there is one. Enter opens the idea under the cursor, and E reads out its links and the reason recorded on each. Press slash for Search, question mark for the full key list, and Escape to leave. Open Ideas for the complete readable list, including what each idea builds on and what it opens up.

LOGIKA · RBDS AI LAB INDIA
ON-RAMP · AGE 11 · FIRST ENCOUNTERS, NOT GATES — IDEAS · — DEPENDENCIES
DONE
OPENS NEXT
SOLID — STANDS ON