Start with the assignment, not the tool

Every conversation about AI collapses into the same two camps: people who want the tool everywhere, and people who want it banned. Both camps share one mistake — they treat the technology as the decision. It isn’t. The work is the decision. The tool is a consequence.

The clearest place to watch this play out is a classroom, because a classroom makes the work explicit. But the move generalizes to any task anyone is deciding whether to hand to a model.

The ten-minute version

Pick one assignment from your course and answer honestly: what is the thinking this assignment exists to make students do? Not the deliverable — the thinking. The essay isn’t the point; the argument construction is. Then ask: if a student used AI on this assignment, would the thinking still happen?

Three answers are possible, and each tells you exactly what to do.

The thinking still happens. The work is in the doing — a lab performed, a weld inspected, a presentation delivered live. AI is a typing upgrade here. Your policy fits in one sentence.

The thinking gets skipped. The uncomfortable middle where most writing-adjacent assignments live. The answer isn’t detection software — it’s redesign: move the reasoning somewhere visible. Drafts with tracked decisions. In-class defense. Oral follow-ups on a random sample.

The thinking changes. The most interesting bin: assignments where AI in the loop makes a harder, better task. Critique the model’s answer and find its errors. Get three AI drafts, then write the version all three missed.

Sort your assignments into those bins and the AI policy writes itself — per assignment, not per course. Blanket bans read as theater. Assignment-level clarity reads as design, and people respect design even when they test it.

Swap “assignment” for “task” and the same three bins sort a job, a team, or a workflow. That is the whole method.

The longer version of this argument is on the blog: Start with the assignment, not the tool.

One thing

Try the ten-minute exercise on ONE assignment before Monday. Not your whole syllabus — one assignment, one honest answer about where the thinking lives. That’s the entire ask this week.

Working on something where this stuff matters? Just hit reply — I read everything, and the interesting problems tend to turn into conversations.