Your rules for high stakes

The last lesson of the Explorer track.

E8·L8 asked you to write a code of conduct for your work. This is the same exercise for the questions that arrive when you are frightened, rushed, or awake at three in the morning — which is to say, in the state where every rule you have is hardest to follow.

That is precisely why they get written now.

Six rules

Adopt, adapt, or reject deliberately. Write your version down.

1. I will ask how things work, not what to do about my case. L1’s line. Educational questions are safe and genuinely useful. Questions that decide your specific situation need someone accountable.

2. I will never act on a number, citation, dose or deadline from an assistant. Concept from AI, figure from the official source. This one rule prevents most of what goes seriously wrong in this module — L4’s stale rates, L5’s fabricated citations, L3’s confident diagnosis.

3. I will state my jurisdiction, and distrust any answer that ignores it. L5’s rule, and it applies to money and benefits as much as law.

4. When I notice the spiral, I stop. L3. More frightened at question four than question one means the path only had alarming answers on it. Stopping is the skill.

5. Manufactured urgency means slow down, not hurry up. L6. Anything demanding a decision faster than I can check it gets more time asked for, not a faster answer found.

6. I will use it to prepare for people, not instead of them. L2 and L7. Organise the history, write the questions, understand the answers. That is where the genuine value in this whole module sits.

Know your own state

The rules fail in predictable conditions. Learn to notice yours.

Frightened. You will keep asking, and the answers will keep being alarming.

Rushed. You will take the first plausible answer without checking.

Wanting a particular answer. E7·L7’s asymmetric scrutiny, at its most expensive — hoping the lump is nothing, hoping the contract is fine, hoping you can afford it.

Alone at night. Everything above, compounded, with no one to sanity-check you.

If two or more apply, that is the moment to stop and either wait for morning or call a line staffed by a human. Not because the technology got worse — because you did, temporarily, and everyone does.

What Explorer covered

Fourteen modules. What AI is and is not. The assistants and how to choose. How to ask. Where it fits in a working day. Documents that hold up. Media and its ethics. Verifying claims and resisting manipulation. Your own code of conduct. Using it when reading, writing, seeing or hearing is hard. Working in your own language. What it costs. The AI you never chose. How to actually learn. And now the questions where being wrong hurts most.

The thread running through all of it is not enthusiasm and not suspicion. It is that these tools are genuinely useful and specifically limited, and knowing which is which is the entire skill.

If you continue, Practitioner builds things with them. If you stop here, you have what you need — and the rules you just wrote are the part that keeps mattering after the details fade.

Try it now (8 minutes)

Write your six rules. Your words, one page.

Then send the three numbers from L6 to someone who might need them, and look up one free service from L7 in your area.

Rules on paper, numbers in your phone, one service found. That is a good place to finish.

Check your understanding

1. Why write high-stakes rules in advance? Rules are easier to remember when written You will use them frightened, rushed or at 2am — when you reason worst They may be legally required

2. The single rule preventing most serious harm in this module: Always state your jurisdiction Never act on a number, citation, dose or deadline without checking the official source Never ask about health at all

3. When two or more of frightened, rushed, wanting a particular answer, and alone at night apply: Ask more carefully worded questions Stop, and either wait for morning or call a human-staffed line Switch to a more capable model

Recap

Six rules, written before you need them: ask how things work rather than what to do; never act on a number, citation, dose or deadline without the official source; state your jurisdiction; stop when you notice the spiral; treat manufactured urgency as a reason to slow down; and use it to prepare for people rather than instead of them. Then learn the states in which you will break them. That completes E14, and the Explorer track.