Principles of AI · Unit 3: AI in the World ·  Problem 3.3.1

AI Guidance for a Real Client

What should the tool handle, what must stay human, and what happens when it fails?  ·  8 in-class days · teams

Pulls TogetherThe Whole Course
Unit 3: AI in the World

A family-run print shop just signed up for an AI tool after a very confident sales call. It promised to answer customers, quote jobs, and "run the front office." The owner is excited and a little nervous, and she has three employees whose jobs she doesn't want to lose.

Your team has spent ten weeks learning how AI learns, where it fails, how to measure it, and how it changes real jobs. She asks you what the tool should handle, what it should never touch, and how she'll know when it's wrong.

There's no answer key. A customer quote with the wrong price, an email that sounds nothing like her shop, and a tool no one knows how to turn off are all real risks. Your guide has to hold up when she actually uses it.

Your Investigation Questions
Q1What should be automated, what should be assisted, and what must stay human?
Q2How will someone catch a wrong answer before a customer sees it?
Q3When the tool fails, and it will, what happens next?

This is the assignment. On the problem page your team gets a client of its own (or your teacher arranges a real one). Everything in this course was building toward being able to make, and defend, this exact guide.

🧭 Plot Summary

There's no new content here. This problem puts the unit together. Your team meets a client and learns what their work looks like: the tasks, how often, what a mistake costs, and who checks today. You'll sort every task with the four questions, decide where the tool should do the work, where it should help, and where a person must stay in charge, and say why.

Then you plan the checking and the failures: who looks at the tool's work, when and how, and what happens when it's wrong in a way that looks right, or when it stops. You'll write an AI-use guide and a log the client can keep, have another team test them, revise, and defend your choices out loud.

Resource Map: where each piece comes from

Stuck on one step? Jump straight to the lesson that covers it.

3.1.2Data Footprint Audit

What a tool collects, who else sees it, and what should never go in

3.2.1Substitute or Complement?

The four questions, the four levels, and the two stop signs

3.2.2Talent Stack

The four strands, and the difference between a claim and evidence

3.2.3Task X-Ray Prep

The camera test for tasks, questions that get true answers, and safe interviews

3.2.4Task X-Ray Report

Can versus should, naming your evidence, and saying what you don't know

3.1.3Feed Audit & Letter

One concrete ask, supported by evidence and fair to the other side

✅ Self-Check Before You Roll On

Check off each item as you get there. These aren't grades. They're your own signal.