The four habits I teach now spell one word

Hi {{first_name|friend}},

Something small happened in class this week that I'd like to share. A student asked me a simple question I did not have a good answer for & fixing that gave me a cleaner way to hand you the four habits I most want you to walk away with.

My Take

The card in my course now spells ACES and I have a student to thank for it.

He likes mnemonics, has carried one around for prompting for years, and during a class where I taught the 4 human habits of working well with AI, he asked if I had a ready made one so he could remember them. I didn't. He had a point though. A mnemonic helps anyone remember, me included. So I rebuilt the card. Here is what the letters stand for, in the order you run them.

Ask it to interview you before it answers. AI can usually tell when your question lacks detail and it still will not ask you for more info on its own.

Cut the generic. When an answer could be for anyone, push it to your situation and your real limits. For example, if you only have one hour a day for a project, let it know this upfront.

Explain what is wrong. Tell it exactly what is off instead of asking "are you sure?", which mostly just makes it cave to what it thinks you want to hear.

Second opinion. Paste the answer into a fresh chat or a different AI and ask what is wrong with it.

None of these is technical. They are the habits of someone who has enough experience to know a confident answer is not the same as a right one (exactly the instinct you already bring). Which of the four are you already doing without thinking about it? Some folks have the second opinion down before I ever teach it.

Try This Today

Here is a ten minute play you can run today and it needs no special tool. Open the AI you already use and paste in something long you have been putting off: a report, a contract or a thread of thirty emails.

Then ask it this, word for word: "What are the three decisions this is actually asking me to make? For each one, tell me what you would need from me to decide it."

You will get back three real choices instead of a wall of text. That is the highest value everyday use of these tools. Your judgment is what turns the summary into an actual decision. If the three it gives you feel off, that is you catching an assumption. Tell it what it got wrong and run it again.

Watch: how a student flipped a confident, wrong AI plan with a single sentence.

@aiover50

#creatorsearchinsights #aitrainingforbeginners ChatGPT built a confident plan on a wrong assumption. 1 sentence fixed it. The research on... See more

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Tell me

I want to hear about a time you caught AI out. What is the last assumption you noticed your AI making about you or your situation? Feel free to reply to me with one line (I read every response).