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Four Ways of Working with AI

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Module 03•5 minute read + practice•FREE

Four Ways of Working with AI

Four ways of working with AI, from trying a prompt to maintaining a useful system. These are workflow examples, not personality rankings.

These are examples of workflows, not personality types or a validated assessment. They do not divide people into superior and inferior groups. You may use several approaches in the same day.

1. Try a single task

Ask for an outline, a summary or an explanation. This is useful for exploring possibilities, provided you inspect the response before relying on it.

Choose a task with a clear boundary. Compare the answer with your own understanding or the original source. Notice what the model omitted as well as what it produced.

2. Repeat a useful process

When a task recurs, write down the inputs, required output and review steps. A consistent brief can make attempts easier to compare.

Keep examples of failures as well as successes. If a template works for one document but fails on another, change the process rather than assuming the new result is safe.

3. Work through a problem in stages

Separate understanding the problem, proposing options, choosing an approach and checking the result. You make the decisions; the model can help generate alternatives or inspect assumptions.

For example, review the requirements for a website before asking for page copy. Check the offer and evidence before polishing a headline. This helps prevent a polished draft from quietly deciding the business strategy for you.

4. Maintain a system other people use

Once others depend on the workflow, writing a prompt is only part of the work. Define access, review responsibilities, failure handling and a way to stop or correct the system.

Test representative cases and difficult cases. Decide what must be reviewed by a person and who responds when something goes wrong. A successful demonstration is a starting point, not proof of dependable operation.

Practice

Choose the approach that fits your current task. Write down its intended user, one likely failure and the check that would reveal that failure. Then decide the smallest useful next step.

Moving to a more complex workflow is optional. Use the simplest process that produces a result you can understand and check.

Four Ways of Working with AI | High-Bandwidth Human-AI Framework | Travis Eric