A Practical Guide to Human-AI Collaboration

The field guide for professionals who refuse to be replaced, and are ready to become irreplaceable.

If you're reading this, you've probably felt it: that low-grade anxiety about AI. The headlines about jobs disappearing. The pressure to "adapt or die." The confusion about where to even start.

Here's what I've learned after years of researching human cognition, teaching AI literacy, and consulting with organizations navigating this transition: The people who thrive aren't the ones who resist AI or blindly adopt it—they're the ones who learn to dance with it.

What This Guide Does

This isn't a technical manual. You won't need to understand transformers, neural networks, or machine learning architectures.

This is a collaboration handbook: a practical, cognitive-science-grounded approach to working with AI as a thinking partner that amplifies what makes you uniquely human.

You'll Discover:

The Reframe: Why AI is a cognitive prosthetic, not a replacement—and what that means for your competitive advantage

The CRAFT Framework: A simple structure that transforms vague requests into powerful prompts that get you dramatically better results

The Refinement Loop: How to iterate with AI like a skilled collaborator, building on what works and redirecting what doesn't

Domain-Specific Workflows: Proven techniques for writing, problem-solving, research, creative work, and strategic decision-making

The Partnership Mindset: How to maintain your irreplaceable human judgment while leveraging AI's computational power

Advanced Strategies: Meta-prompting, the "teaching" technique, error analysis, and building your personalized AI toolkit

Who This Is For

You're a professional, educator, entrepreneur, or knowledge worker who:

Feels the pressure to "use AI" but doesn't know where to start

Has experimented with AI tools and gotten frustrated with mediocre results

Worries about being replaced but knows ignoring AI isn't the answer

Wants practical frameworks, not philosophical debates or technical jargon

Values human judgment, creativity, and expertise—and wants to amplify them

Why I Wrote This

As a computational cognitive science professor who consults on emerging technology adoption, I've seen both the promise and the pitfalls of human-AI collaboration. I've watched people transform their work through effective AI partnership, and I've seen others stumble because they approached it wrong.

The difference isn't technical skill. It's collaboration literacy, understanding how to direct, evaluate, and refine AI outputs while maintaining your essential human judgment.

This guide distills years of research, teaching, and consulting into a practical roadmap anyone can follow.

What You'll Walk Away With

By the end of this guide, you'll:

See AI as a tool that makes you more human, not less

Have concrete frameworks you can apply immediately

Understand which tasks benefit from AI and which require your expertise

Know how to iterate toward excellence rather than accepting mediocre outputs

Feel confident in your ability to adapt as AI tools continue evolving

The future belongs to those who learn to collaborate with AI effectively, not those who fear it or blindly trust it.

This guide shows you how to be one of them.