Lesson 006Field guide · AI Safety & Privacy
Human Review Rules
Decide what always needs your eyes before it ships.
You'll learn
- Why pre-made rules beat in-the-moment judgment
- Three review tiers, sorted by stakes
- The never-auto-send list
- Review rituals that survive your busiest week
- Your personal AI safe-use checklist — assembled and kept
01Section
Rules beat busy moments
You now know what never gets pasted, how to verify claims, where hallucinations cluster, how to guard sensitive work, and how to pass the comfort test. One risk remains, and it's the biggest: none of that knowledge applies itself at 4:55 on a deadline Friday.
The failure mode of AI safety isn't ignorance — it's hurry. The answer looked fine, the day was long, you hit send. The fix is deciding in advance what always gets your eyes, so the decision is already made when you're too busy to make it well.
A useful analogy
Pilots run pre-flight checklists not because they forget how to fly, but because aviation learned that busy, tired, routine moments are exactly when steps get skipped. Your review rules do the same job — they don't doubt your competence, they protect it.
Checkpoint
02Section
Three tiers, sorted by stakes
Checking AI Outputs sized verification to stakes. Review works the same way — three tiers, decided by one question: what happens if this output is wrong?
Tier 1 — Glance: private and reversible: Brainstorms, your own notes, rough drafts nobody sees. Skim for usefulness and move on. Over-reviewing here is how review budgets die.
Tier 2 — Full read: leaves your desk, carries your name: Emails, posts, documents — anything a colleague or customer reads. Read every line as the recipient would, and verify the load-bearing facts.
Tier 3 — Full review plus: money, law, health, people, public: Contract language, pricing, anything about a person's job or health, public statements. Line-by-line review, facts at original sources, and where stakes warrant it, a second qualified human.
Checkpoint
03Section
The never-auto-send list
Some outputs skip the tier debate entirely — they never go out unread, no matter how good the draft looks or how late it is:
- Anything to a customer or client. Their trust is the most expensive thing an unread draft can spend.
- Anything about a person — references, feedback, HR notes, introductions. People remember wrong details about themselves for a long time.
- Numbers anyone will act on — prices, dates, quantities, budgets.
- Legal or contract language, even the "boilerplate."
- Anything public under your name or brand.
- Anything you'd have to apologize for if it's wrong. If you can already picture the apology, review it now instead.
The test for your own list
If sending it unread makes you slightly nervous, it belongs on the list. The list exists to hold exactly the things hurry would skip.
Checkpoint
04Section
Rituals that survive busy weeks
Rules fail when they depend on willpower. Rituals survive because they attach to actions you already take. Four that hold up:
The separate-motion rule
Never send in the same motion as generating. Draft, break contact for even a minute, reread as the recipient, then send.
The name-and-number pass
Before anything ships, point at every name, number, date, and link and confirm each one. Thirty seconds; catches the worst class of error.
Read it aloud
For anything Tier 2 and up. Your ear catches wrong tone and gaps in logic that your eye skims past.
The tired-hours rule
Know your low-focus hours. Tier 3 output doesn't ship during them — it waits for a fresh read.
Checkpoint
05Section
Assemble your safe-use checklist
Everything in this path funnels into one artifact: a personal safe-use checklist — short enough to keep in sight, specific enough to act on. Four lines, one from each theme you've covered — plus a fifth for the ritual that keeps them running:
- What I never share: Your never-paste list, plus whatever is specific to your work — client names, patient details, unreleased plans.
- What I always verify: Your risk zones: the facts, numbers, and sources you never repeat unchecked.
- What always gets human review: Your Tier 3 and never-auto-send items, in your own words.
- My disclosure rule: The one-sentence rule you wrote in Ethical AI Basics.
Copy and fill in — the safe-use checklist template
MY AI SAFE-USE CHECKLIST 1. I never share: passwords or credentials, government or financial IDs, other people's private data, confidential work material — and: [your additions] 2. I always verify before repeating or relying: facts, numbers, names, dates, quotes, links, calculations — especially: [your highest-risk items] 3. Always gets my full review before it ships: anything to a client or customer, anything about a person, numbers people will act on, legal language, anything public — and: [your additions] 4. My disclosure rule: [when I say AI helped] 5. My ritual: [e.g., separate-motion rule + name-and-number pass]
Key takeaway
A checklist you keep beats a course you remember. Five short lines, kept where you work, is the whole system.
Checkpoint
Prompt exercise
Build your personal safe-use checklist
This is the path capstone — it produces the artifact you keep. Copy this prompt into ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Copilot, or whichever AI tool you have access to (the website doesn't run AI itself). Answer its questions honestly, and you'll end with a checklist tailored to your actual work. Then put the result somewhere you'll see it — your notes app, a sticky note, the top of your task list.
I've just finished a course on using AI safely, and I want to build my personal AI safe-use checklist. Interview me one question at a time — my line of work, the sensitive information I handle, what I create with AI, and who relies on my output. Then draft my checklist in five short sections: 1) What I never share with AI tools, 2) What I always verify before relying on it, 3) What always gets my full human review before it ships, 4) My disclosure rule for when I say AI helped, 5) My review ritual — the habit I attach to sending. Keep each section to 2–4 plain lines I can act on, make it specific to my answers rather than generic advice, and format the final result as plain text I can copy and keep.
Reflection: Where will this checklist live so you actually see it? A checklist in sight beats every rule you merely remember.
Quick check
4 quick questions — no pressure
There's no pass or fail here. Answer them all, and we'll show you the answers either way.