Is your AI always getting dates and days of the week wrong? (Solution)

I had this discussion many times in my community: Claude, ChatGPT, and all the AIs are never able to properly determine days of the week and proper dates.

I have the solution now, and it's the same one as for calculations.

It needs to use code, so here goes the sentence to put in your global instruction for any AI that you're using or into your prompt if you need an AI to use a calendar or help you plan something. Here goes the sentence:

"Always run code to compute or verify any date, day of the week, or time interval. Never answer date questions from memory."

And the root cause is the same as for calculations. If the AI does not use code, it will just make a guess. That is why most of the time it gets it wrong.

12 comments