AI Charter

We're generating more with AI and most of it is making more work for the people who receive it, act on it, or have to clean it up. This only changes if we choose to use it better.

01. Own the decision

The output lands on your desk. The decision lands on your reputation. These are not separable. "The AI said so" is not a defence — it's an admission. When you own it, the people relying on your judgment can trust what they receive.

02. Invite AI to everything

Nobody knows yet where AI is most useful in your field. The only way to find out is to try it — broadly, repeatedly, across tasks you'd expect it to help with and tasks you wouldn't. When you share what you learn, you accelerate everyone around you. Avoidance isn't wisdom. It's just a slower way to fall behind — and it takes your team with you.

03. Ask better questions

Vague prompts produce confident vague answers — which is worse than silence, because they look like answers. Give the model context, constraints, and a clear objective. The better your questions, the better the output others receive when you share it, act on it, or build on it.

04. Verify before you act

Hallucination is too whimsical a word for fabricated facts delivered with total conviction. Nearly half of enterprise professionals have made at least one significant decision based on AI content that turned out to be false. Every piece of unverified AI output you pass on becomes someone else's problem — or someone else's mistake.

05. Ask it to argue against you

AI is trained — structurally, not by accident — to agree with you. One major model was literally rolled back in 2025 for being too agreeable. Ask it what a sceptic would say. When you stress-test your own thinking before sharing it, the people who receive your work get your best judgment, not AI's first draft.

06. Protect what's private

Consumer AI tools often train on your inputs. People now paste sensitive data into AI at scale, mostly through personal devices, bypassing every governance control. What you put in may not stay in — and it's rarely only your information at risk. If you wouldn't post it publicly, don't paste it in.

07. Keep practising the hard things

When you outsource reasoning consistently, that capacity quietly erodes. The professionals expected to supervise AI are becoming less equipped to do so — precisely because they've been using it. Your expertise is not just yours. It's what the people who rely on you are counting on. Don't let it atrophy quietly.

08. Respect the reader's time

AI has lowered the cost of producing words. It hasn't lowered the cost of reading them. Every padded email, inflated report, and AI-bloated summary is a tax on someone else's attention. The burden is on the sender. It always was.

09. Speak in your own voice

AI can draft for you. It should not speak as you — in advice, analysis, or anything that carries your name and judgment. When AI has played a meaningful role, say so. The people receiving your work deserve to know what they're trusting. Undisclosed use, discovered after the fact, costs trust disproportionate to the original omission.

10. Remember this is the worst it will ever be

Today's tools will look primitive within a few years. The habits you build now — curiosity, scepticism, independent judgment — are the habits you model for everyone watching. Stay sharp. Keep learning. Be the person others learn how to do this from.

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The technology will keep improving. The judgment required to use it wisely won't improve automatically. That part is still on you — and it shows.