You Ask, I Answer: Stopping AI Americanisms?  In today's episode,Nigel asks, "How do I stop AI fromusing American spelling andculturalisms?"This is a pretty big problem.There was an article not too long ago inthe Guardian that showed linguisticanalysis of the speeches delivered bythe ministers of parliament in the UK.It discussed how American language traits were rapidly creepinginto the speeches that MPs were givingfrom the floor of Parliament becausethey were using generative AI togenerate their speeches and then justreading them aloud. We will not discuss politics inthis episode regarding whether or notthat's even a good idea, but there are acouple of different ways to handle this.The first is to make sure that whatevertool you're using supportsthe variant of English that you want tobe using, because AI is absolutelytrained on global amounts of language.However, the English language is oftenslanted towards American English, so make sure that yourinterface is set for the appropriate English variant. That you are working in, whether it'sIrish, UK, Australian, or Indian.That's number one. Numbertwo is to make sure that you are usingreasoning models. So reasoning modelsare models that do thinking. This is GT5.2,high or extra high. This isGemini 3 Pro and Flash with thinkingturned on. This is Claude Opuswith extended thinking turned on. This isDeepseek R1. This is Alibaba Quen 3. Allthese models have thinking capabilities,which means that they caneffectively do a rough draft.All these models have different ways ofimplementing their reasoning. This issomething that is a fairly technicalsubject in terms of things likeMonty College research orreinforcement modeling, PRMSor backtracking, but they all work reallywell with checklist monitoring.You tell AI in your prompt to build achecklist of the tasks you want it to door you just write a checklist as yourprompt, and then use a thinking modelto validate its results at the end. Here's the thing that is challenging fora lot of people, humans. You can't tellAInot to do this, right? It's like sayingdon't think of an elephant. You have tothink of an elephant to not think of anelephant. The very nature of languagemodels of probability means that if yousay don't think of an elephantand you give it nothing else, it's goingto think of an elephant just like youdid. If you say don't think of anelephant, think of a dog. Think of a Shar Pei. Think of a Newfoundland. Think of something, and youput more dog stuff in than elephantstuff. That will help a reasoning modelthink through and go, "Oh, we're talkingabout dogs. Here's the, you know,here's dog stuff."If you tell AI, you have to tell AI notonly what not to do, you have to tell AIwhat to do. So, you would not say,"Don't use American English orAmerican cultural references. Use Welshreferences, use Welsh spelling,use Scots Gaelic, you know, whateverthe thing is that you want it todo, you have to explicitly declare itand say, "This is what you should be. Doing so, if you noticecertain Americanismsin the writing, you would not justsay, "Don't do this." You would say, "Don'tdo this; do this instead." Don't do this;do this instead.If you combine that with achecklist-based prompt, thenwhen the model thinks through and gets tothat point in the process, it will lookat the checklist and say, "Oh, I didthis. I should do this instead. Oh, Idid this. I should do this instead."It's like delegating to an intern;but it works with all three major kindsof reasoning models that are out there:backtracking, PRMs, and MCPS. So thatyou get more of what you want. Italways drives me up a wall when I seepeople say, "Oh, I can't get AI to stopusing N dashes." Did you tell it what touse instead? Do not say, "Don't dothis." Say, "Do this instead. Use an Ndash instead." Make sure there's aspace on the other side and incorporateit into the logic of your prompt. This way,the reasoning model can check it andsay, "Yes, I did this thing." Or, "No, Idid not do this thing. Let me go back. And fix it.That's how you get it to stop doingcertain behaviors. It's never enough tosay, "Don't do this." You have to giveit explicitly what you want it to doinstead, just like an intern. So, I hopethat was helpful. Thanks for thequestion. Talk to you on the next one. If you enjoyed this video, please hitthe like button. 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