The Applied AI field guide
Intelligence,
put to work.
Know what to automate. What to delegate. And what to keep human.
Explore the guide
A model is not
a system.
Useful intelligence needs context, clear permissions and somewhere for the work to go.
- Context
Give it the right inputs.
Separate useful company knowledge from a bigger pile of data.
- Boundaries
Decide what it can do.
Set permissions, checks and stop conditions before execution.
- Ownership
Make the handoff explicit.
Name who reviews the result and owns what happens next.
In the guide: how the pieces fit together.
Less chasing.
More judgment.
The point is not more output. It is useful work reaching the right person.
In the guide: handoffs, human responsibility and measurable value.
Inside the guide
Better questions.
Better applications.
Eight chapters on turning a promising capability into work worth doing.
- 01
The Demo Is Not the Business
Separate an impressive capability from an application worth operating.
- 02
Start with the Work
Find the recurring decisions, delays and handoffs where intelligence can earn its place.
- 03
Your AI Has Never Worked Here
Give the system useful company context without confusing access with understanding.
- 04
Give It a Job, Not the Keys
Choose the right boundary between assistance, execution and autonomy.
- 05
The Handoff Is the Product
Connect the answer to a completed action, a responsible person and a recoverable process.
- 06
A Confident Answer Is Not a Control
Test the awkward cases and build for exceptions, privacy and failure.
- 07
Someone Still Has to Run the Place
Design ownership and adoption around the people who will live with the system.
- 08
Make It Earn Its Place
Measure the whole workflow and turn a promising pilot into a defensible operating decision.
Read the opening
Applied AI / An opening excerpt
The demo is usually the easy part. Nobody in the demo has entered the same company three different ways, forgotten why a field exists, or gone on vacation with the only useful explanation of the process. Your business, regrettably, contains people.
Applied AI begins there. Not with a machine pretending the mess isn't real, but with a system designed to do useful work inside it. That means making choices about the work, the information, the authority and the person who remains responsible when an impressive answer is also wrong.
Continue with the complete guide
Put it to work.
A practical guide to choosing the right work, designing dependable systems and knowing what good looks like.
Read the opening first