Follow the
thinking.

A useful reason to test the actual work, rather than assume that success on a neighbouring task will carry across.

Read with care. A specific model, group of participants and task set. This is not a current ranking of AI tools.

Which part of your workflow could look similar to a successful demonstration while demanding a different kind of judgement?

A concrete setting for thinking about how assistance can change access to expertise, rather than simply replace it.

Read with care. Results from a particular workplace and task. A productivity effect there does not establish the effect in your organisation.

Whose knowledge becomes easier to use, and how will the next generation learn to develop it?

A large public-sector trial offers a view of everyday use across different kinds of work.

Read with care. Self-reported time savings, one product family, tools tested in late 2024. Participation is not the same as a measured productivity gain.

What would this experiment look like at your organisation’s size, and who would read the result?

It makes the human effort around checking, integrating and accepting an answer worth examining.

Read with care. Self-reported survey evidence. It does not prove that AI causes a lasting loss of critical thinking ability.

When an answer arrives looking finished, what makes you decide to inspect it?

The checking, context and repair behind an output often disappear from the productivity story.

Read with care. Vendor-published, with university co-authors. Self-reported experience from digital workers, not a productivity audit of the whole workforce.

Who in your team is botsitting, and does anyone’s dashboard know?

The historical starting point for the book’s question about what happens when a machine appears to answer back.

Read with care. A historical language-processing program. The exercise here is inspired by simple pattern matching and is not the original implementation.

What do you bring to a conversation that the program itself does not know?

A practical way to think about the relationship around the model: setting expectations, supporting correction and adapting carefully.

Read with care. Design guidance is a starting point. It does not remove the need to test a particular system with the people using it.

What should a useful AI colleague do when it is wrong?

A companion for moving from impressive demonstrations to deliberate practice.

Read with care. A fast-moving field. Treat specific tool advice as dated, the frames as durable.

Which of your tasks sits just beyond the frontier, and how would you find out?

It puts the work around a new capability at the centre of the story.

Read with care. Economic history. The parallel to AI is the reader’s to test.

What is your industry’s equivalent of a port built for the old way of moving things?