Minigame In the News Discuss AI Theory Task Delegation Practice Product Discernment Practice Task
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Delegate the Task /delegate-the-task--ai-theory

Task Delegation

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Good delegation isn't about AI at all

It starts with you: knowing exactly what you're making and what only you can judge. Hand over the wheel without that, and even the best AI drives you off the road.

Teacher note

Source: 4-transcript. The cornerstone is the human, not the tool. Let the body land before resolving into the framework.

Discussion drills

  1. Diagnose 1

    A student prompts: "Write a persuasive essay on social media." Claude produces a 600-word piece that presents two sides and avoids taking a position. The student is angry: "I said persuasive."

    Locate the failure. Which element of the brief (role, scope, format, constraints) was missing or wrong? Could "persuasive" alone have produced a persuasive essay? What would the brief need to say?

  2. Construct 2

    Take this task: "Summarise this research paper for my supervisor." Rewrite it as a full delegation brief using all four elements. The brief should be specific enough that two different students receiving the same paper would produce near-identical prompts from it.

  3. Predict 3

    You delegate a complex research task to Claude in one message: "Research the history of the Korean education system and write a 1,500-word overview for a general audience." Predict two types of error that will appear in the output that would not appear if you had decomposed the task into three separate delegated steps.

  4. Judge 4

    "AI delegation works best for tasks you don't fully understand β€” that is the whole point, it can do the thinking for you." Evaluate this claim. What specific failure mode does it invite, and under what condition does that failure mode become undetectable?

  5. Falsify 5

    "If your brief is precise enough, you never need to verify the output β€” a well-specified task produces a correct result." Construct a counterexample: a brief that is precise on all four elements and still produces an output that requires verification.

  6. Compare 6

    Compare "give Claude the whole task at once" vs "decompose then delegate step by step." For which task type does each produce better results? Name the deciding variable.

Apply this in the project

The newsroom brief you receive today is someone else's delegation to you. Is it specific enough to execute? Identify the one gap that would break it.

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