Volume 52: A Year In and Still Not an AI Expert
A rule against putting confidential data into public AI tools is a prohibition, not a policy. A real AI policy answers five questions about disclosure, editorial control, data leaving the building, training, and what happens when the tool changes.
What a Weekly Deadline Made Possible
A year ago I felt like an outsider at an AI conference. Fifty-two weekly issues later I am still not an AI expert, and I do not expect to become one. What changed is that a weekly deadline made me use what I learned, and that work became useful to the people around me.
Steal My Prompt Vol. 52: The Direct Report Coaching Plan
Most employee development plans fail because they are written before anyone names what is in the way. This AI prompt interviews the manager, separates fit, skills, and environment, then builds a 30-day observation plan and a 60-day coaching plan around the real cause.
Volume 51: You Can Only Audit What You Already Understand
The rule that makes you label AI work has three conditions, and most workplace writing fails the first one. A watermark is not a label, an unmarked document proves nothing, and in most jobs the disclosure duty belongs to your employer rather than to you.
Being in the Loop Is Not Enough
I handed a job to an agent with computer use, and it finished the work, cleaned up after itself, and wrote the report I would normally use to judge whether it was done. I could check that report only because I already knew every system it touched.
Steal My Prompt Vol. 51: The Parking Lot Recall
You leave the visit certain about some of it and fuzzy on the rest. This prompt takes a three-minute dictation from the parking lot, tags every item as heard, unsure, or lost, then builds your instruction list and a portal message that asks the office to confirm the rest.
Volume 50: The Work You Wrote Off as Impossible
The EU AI Act's AI literacy duty took effect in February 2025 and became enforceable in August 2026. It reaches US companies whose AI use touches people in the EU, and it asks whether the staff using AI tools were told what those tools get wrong.
There Is No Such Thing as an AI Expert
There is no such thing as an AI expert. I built and filmed a podcast with a friend who had never done it either, on a calendar with no room for it, by putting AI into every workflow neither of us had built before.
