The AI Assignment

Most people use AI the way they use a search box: type a question, judge the answer, try again. That works for small things. It falls short when the work matters and you will answer for the result.

The AI Assignment teaches a different habit: give AI a whole job, not a question. Before you write a prompt, decide what the job is, what finished looks like, what is at stake, and whether AI is the right tool at all. Supply the facts and sources that govern the work. Direct it in plain words. Test what comes back against a standard you set in advance. And keep the judgment, and the authority to act, with a person.

The book lays this out in nine steps: understand, define, supply, direct, test, equip, engineer, supervise, and put it to work. The early steps serve anyone who uses AI to research, write, plan, compare or review documents, at home or on the job. The later steps explain what the AI products you already use are doing on your behalf, and show anyone who builds a system other people depend on how to equip it, formalize it and supervise it so its good behavior does not depend on luck.

This is a field manual, not a catalog of prompt tricks. Its examples are ordinary: a fence, a water heater, a dentist appointment, a weekly brief. Its stories come from the author's own life: a bag of evidence stapled to a court file, a broken parking meter, a command sergeant major, and the work he lost before he learned to keep his own files.

Larry D Sullivan is a retired Delaware lawyer and a former judge of the Newark Alderman's Court. He began programming in the 1970s and now works with AI at least six hours a day. He made this book the way it teaches: with AI at every stage, and with every decision his own.