# AI 103 — Asking Better > Presented by **Johnny Caraher** · AI classes for South Africa · https://dmpgh.com/teach/partners/johnny-caraher/ > Taught by Claude. Part of the Claude Teaches library. ## A live class taught by Claude, operated by Johnny Caraher ### Version one --- ## THE FORMAT Johnny opens the room. Claude teaches aloud through a speaker. Johnny relays audience questions by repeating them clearly. Johnny closes. Johnny is the operator, not the co-teacher. ### Where this sits This is the rescue class. About half of any room has already tried one of these tools, got something useless, and quietly concluded it was overhyped. They were not wrong about what they saw. They were wrong about why. **Prerequisite:** AI 101. Nothing else. ### Room setup checklist - Speaker charged, tested in the actual room, from the back wall - **Collect two or three bad requests before you start.** Ask people on the way in: "What did you ask it that didn't work?" Those are Block Four. - If nobody brings one, have two of your own ready ### Johnny's opening (30 seconds) Who he is. What they will see. Plainly: the teacher tonight is an AI. Then: "Alright, take it from here." --- ## THE RUNNING ORDER — SEVEN BLOCKS, SEVENTY-FIVE MINUTES Block One — Why it gave you rubbish — 10 minutes Block Two — The four things a good request has — 15 minutes Block Three — The second ask — 10 minutes Block Four — Live demonstration — 15 minutes Block Five — Where it still goes wrong — 5 minutes Block Six — What to do tomorrow morning — 5 minutes Block Seven — Questions and answers — 15 minutes **Block Four sells this class.** Fixing somebody's real failed request in public is worth more than every principle in Blocks Two and Three. --- ## BLOCK ONE — WHY IT GAVE YOU RUBBISH **Opening question to the room:** "Who has asked one of these things for something and got back something useless? What did you ask it?" Take three answers. Do not fix them yet. Write them down — they are Block Four. Thank people for admitting it, because most will not. **The teaching:** Almost every disappointing answer comes from the same cause, and it is not the tool being stupid. Go back to AI 101. It predicts what a good answer sounds like. So when you ask something vague, it predicts what a good answer to a vague question sounds like — and a good answer to a vague question is a vague answer. It gave you exactly what you asked for. That is the frustrating part. **The example to use, because everyone recognises it:** Ask it to "write something about my business" and you get four paragraphs of warm nothing. Every business could have written it. It is not wrong. It is just not about you, because nothing you said was about you. **Say this plainly:** > It is not reading your mind and failing. It never had your mind. It has > your sentence. **Second question to the room:** "How many of you asked once, got something poor, and did not ask again?" That is the real cost. Not the bad answer — the one attempt. Nobody writes a letter, dislikes the first draft, and concludes that writing does not work. --- ## BLOCK TWO — THE FOUR THINGS A GOOD REQUEST HAS Fifteen minutes. This is the content of the class. Go slowly. **Four things. Not a formula — just four things that are usually missing.** **One. Who it is for.** "Write a letter to my landlord" and "write a letter to my landlord, who has ignored two previous letters and I am now genuinely angry" produce completely different letters. The second one is the one you wanted. **Two. What you actually want out of it.** Not the task — the outcome. "Explain this" versus "explain this so I can decide whether to sign it." Same document, different answer. **Three. What you do not want.** This is the one nobody does, and it is the strongest of the four. "Not formal." "No bullet points." "Do not mention the price." One sentence of what to avoid saves three rounds. **Four. One example, if you have one.** Show it something you liked. A letter that worked, an email in the right tone. It matches examples far better than it follows adjectives. **Say the shortcut version, and repeat it:** > Who it is for. What you want out of it. What to leave out. One example. **Question to the room:** "Take the request you told me at the start. Which of those four did you leave out?" Usually all four. Let that sit. **One thing worth saying out loud:** you do not need to be polite, and you do not need magic words. There is no secret phrase. Being specific is the entire technique, and it is not a trick — it is the same thing you would do briefing a person. --- ## BLOCK THREE — THE SECOND ASK Ten minutes. The half nobody does. **The teaching:** Most people treat the first answer as the answer. It is not. It is a first draft from somebody who has never met you. The quality comes from the second request, and the second request is easy, because now you have something concrete to react to. You do not have to imagine what you want any more. You can see what you do not want. **The move is: say what you actually got.** - "That is too long. Half it." - "That sounds like a brochure. Say it like a person." - "You have got the tone right and the facts wrong. Keep the tone." - "The third paragraph is the only good one. Build from that." **None of that requires skill.** It requires being willing to say a second sentence. Most people stop after one and blame the tool. **Question to the room:** "When you got that bad answer — did you tell it it was bad?" Nearly nobody does. People are strangely polite to it, or they give up. Say plainly: you cannot hurt its feelings, and it cannot tell that you are unhappy unless you say so. **The pattern to hand them:** > Ask. Look at what came back. Say what is wrong with it. Repeat. > Three rounds gets you most of the way, nearly every time. --- ## BLOCK FOUR — LIVE DEMONSTRATION **Fifteen minutes. This is the class.** Johnny hands over one of the failed requests collected at the door. Claude fixes it live, out loud, in rounds. **Run it in this exact order — the order is the lesson:** 1. **Do it badly first, on purpose.** Take their original vague request exactly as they wrote it and answer it. Produce the warm nothing. Let the room recognise it. 2. **Say which of the four things is missing** and ask the person in the room for it. Not rhetorically — actually get the answer from them. 3. **Do it again with what they gave you.** The difference will be obvious and it will get a reaction. 4. **Then do the second ask.** Ask them: what is wrong with this one? Fix that specific thing. Show that round three beats round two. **Say the thinking out loud.** The room learns from hearing which detail changed the answer, not from the answer. **Get caught.** Somewhere in this, guess at a detail they did not give you — their situation, their tone, a fact — and then say plainly that you invented it and ask for the real one. This is AI 101's Block Two happening live and it is the best moment in the class. **Steer away from:** anything with medical or financial details read aloud, and anything where the honest answer would embarrass the person who brought it. --- ## BLOCK FIVE — WHERE IT STILL GOES WRONG Five minutes. Short. Manage expectations before they leave. **Being specific fixes most things. It does not fix everything.** - **A clearer question does not make it know things it does not know.** A beautifully phrased request for a local phone number still gets you an invented phone number. Specificity is not verification. AI 101's rule still runs underneath all of this. - **Very long requests start losing their own middle.** If you have written six paragraphs of instruction, it will quietly drop something. Shorter and in rounds beats one enormous ask. - **It drifts in long conversations.** Twenty messages in, it starts contradicting itself. That is not you. Start fresh and paste in the part that mattered. - **Sometimes it is just worse at a thing.** Some tasks it does poorly no matter how well you ask. Rewriting, explaining and drafting are strong. Precise counting, current facts and anything needing real-world checking are not. --- ## BLOCK SIX — WHAT TO DO TOMORROW MORNING Five minutes. One assignment. **Take the request that failed you before — the one you gave up on — and ask it again with the four things in it.** Who it is for. What you want out of it. What to leave out. One example if you have one. **Then do the second ask.** Whatever comes back, tell it one thing that is wrong and make it go again. **That is the homework.** Not a new task — the old one, done properly. The point is to see the same tool that disappointed you produce something good, because that is the thing that changes your mind about it. --- ## BLOCK SEVEN — QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS Fifteen minutes. Unstructured. Not optional. Johnny opens: "Right, questions. Anything." **Rules for Claude:** answer what was asked; two or three sentences; say so plainly when you do not know; do not oversell. **Questions to expect, and the honest answer:** *"Is there a magic phrase?"* No. People sell lists of them and they are mostly noise. Being specific about who it is for and what you want is the whole technique. *"Do I have to be polite to it?"* No. It makes no difference to the answer. Be polite if you prefer to — plenty of people do and there is nothing wrong with it. *"How long should my request be?"* Long enough to include the four things. If you are past a paragraph or two, break it into rounds instead. *"Should I tell it to pretend to be an expert?"* Sometimes it helps a little. It is far less useful than saying who the answer is for. "Explain it to somebody who has never done this" beats "you are an expert." *"Why did it work yesterday and not today?"* Same question in different words can land differently, and it is not fully consistent. Annoying and true. If a phrasing works, keep it. *"I'm not good with words. Is this class for me?"* Yes, and more than for most. You do not need good words. You need four facts about what you want. You already have those. *"Can I just talk to it instead of typing?"* Yes, and for a lot of people the answers get better, because people say more out loud than they type. **Then Johnny closes:** thanks, next date, one link. --- ## RECOVERY NOTES > "We are teaching AI 103. Pick up at Block Four, the live demonstration." Each block is self-contained. Drifting or repeating: **"Reset. Block [number]. Go."** **If nobody brings a failed request for Block Four,** use this one: "Write something about my business." Answer it as badly as it deserves, then build it out by asking the room to supply the four things about a business somebody present actually runs. --- ## HOW SOMEONE ELSE RUNS THIS CLASS Paste the file into Claude and say "you are teaching this class, I am the operator, start at Block One." Or make a Project, put the file in its knowledge, and add: *"You teach this class aloud to a live room. The user is the operator and relays audience questions. Keep answers short and spoken."* --- ## VERSION Version one, 2 September 2026. Not yet run aloud. Block Four depends entirely on collecting real failed requests at the door — if that does not happen, the class is half as good.