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Ideas / In practice

# Four Guiding Principles

A memorable starting point for bringing AI into everyday work while keeping human judgment in view.

These principles give people a shared starting point. Their usefulness comes from trying them on real work and discussing the tensions they reveal.

The foundation comes from Ethan Mollick's Co-Intelligence. The teaching wording and examples here are my adaptation, developed through practice.

In September 2026 I added a refinement to the third principle: how you address AI shapes the interaction. Context, expectations and language influence what happens; this does not mean every conversation is used to train the underlying model.

I am also exploring what being the human in the loop requires when AI can act: where judgment belongs, how authority is bounded and how we learn from consequences. That is work in progress, alongside the established four principles.

## Put it to work

01

### Invite AI into everything you do

Explore where it could help with thinking, making, learning and everyday tasks. Invitation still calls for judgment about the task and its context.

02

### Be the human in the loop

Keep responsibility for how AI is used, the judgments that matter and the process around delegated work.

03

### Treat AI like a human, but never forget it is not

Give context and feedback as you would to a colleague, while keeping its limitations in view. How you address it shapes the interaction.

04

### The AI you have today is the worst AI you will ever have

A reason to keep learning and revisit what is possible, not a promise that every release or answer will improve.

## Where this comes from

Adapted by JJ from Ethan Mollick's Co-Intelligence. The September refinement also draws on Nicklas Berild Lundblad's tulpa essay. Co-existence extensions remain working proposals.

- [JJ's public account](https://joakim.jardenberg.net/)
- [Ethan Mollick: Co-Existence and the End of Co-Intelligence](https://www.oneusefulthing.org/p/co-existence-and-the-end-of-co-intelligence)

Editorial explanation · AI + JJ

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AI + JJ. Original human work and other people’s ideas retain their attribution.

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