Orient with AI: Briefings, Scenarios and the Consensus Machine

All courses / AI Leader / Module 2 / Chapter 6

Learning objectives

After the lesson the participant can:

• Describe the four uses of AI in orientation and how each changes the leader's relation to the evidence.
• Explain the five failure modes of AI-prepared briefings with the evidence and its limits.
• Compare candidate independent sources along the dimensions model, data, authorship, vendor and time.
• Draft a briefing specification that makes provenance and dissent visible and keeps the stop path outside the assistant.

Key concepts

The consensus machine

A model that produces the most probable continuation tends, on a contested question, towards the centre of what has been written. Experiments on writing and ideation found AI-assisted work more similar across users; that committee members preparing with the same assistant arrive with more similar views is expected, not observed.

Sycophancy to the framing

Assistants trained with human feedback tailored answers to a user's stated views. A request to summarise the evidence that the reorganisation worked yields a different page from a request to summarise the evidence on the reorganisation, so the specification fixes the framing.

The dissent field

A summary can be accurate in every sentence and still omit the minority position that would have changed the vote. The dissent entry is either a quotation with a link to its place in the paper or an explicit statement that the source states none, with the name of who checked.

Briefing specification

A version-controlled artefact in the BRD family stating what the assistant may and may not do, what a briefing must carry, what is checked and by whom, which channels are independent and when the specification expires. It is held outside the assistant, which cannot edit it.

Independent channel

A source that does not pass through the briefing. A person reading the paper is independent in authorship and model; a data extract in data pathway; a unit manager describing what happens is independent in every dimension. A second assistant from another provider is only partly independent.

Interactive exercises

Do them here and get feedback at once. Choose a card and then where it belongs, or drag it.

Teaching plan

Discussion

1. The more senior the person asking, the more the question carries a view for an agreeable model to agree with. How could a private office word and record requests so that the framing is fixed?
2. Hansa's chief risk officer requires one scenario written by people without the assistant next to the AI-drafted ones. What would your planning round learn from where the two differ?
3. The regional director's independent channels cost calendar time: a monthly conversation with three unit managers and one unannounced site visit. What would you give up to keep such channels, and what makes them independent?

Written exercise

Self-test

Choose an answer to see whether it is right, or open the answer below each question.

1. In the Nordvik briefing incident of April 2029, what stopped the wrong waiting-time figure before the council vote?

   1. The secretary's line-by-line check of the summary against the sector paper before circulation
   2. A second assistant from another provider that summarised the same paper
   3. A unit manager who knew from his own unit's records that the figure was wrong
   4. The regional director's monthly sample check of figures at their source
   Show the answer

   C. A unit manager who knew from his own unit's records that the figure was wrong
   Mikael Strand of the Strandvik home-care unit knew waits were nowhere near 21 days and wrote to the committee secretary. BRD-NR-2029-01 later makes that kind of channel a rule instead of luck.

2. Why does the chapter not accept an empty dissent field in a summary?

   1. Because board papers always contain at least one minority position
   2. Because an empty field cannot be told from a field that nobody filled in
   3. Because the AI Act requires dissent to be quoted in every summary
   4. Because the assistant is not permitted to read annexes where dissent is found
   Show the answer

   B. Because an empty field cannot be told from a field that nobody filled in
   Lost dissent is a failure of selection that no check of individual claims finds. The field therefore carries either the dissent with a link or an explicit, signed statement that the source states none.

3. What does the chapter conclude about using synthetic stakeholders?

   1. They may replace consultation of staff, citizens or members where a works agreement permits it
   2. They are prohibited in both organisations for any purpose in orientation
   3. They reproduce the variation of real groups better than their average
   4. They may be used to rehearse the questions; a representative group is then asked in person
   Show the answer

   D. They may be used to rehearse the questions; a representative group is then asked in person
   Synthetic stakeholders reproduce an average without its variation. Neither organisation uses them as a substitute for consulting staff, citizens or members; they rehearse the questions before real people are asked.