# AI 109 — Teaching Somebody Else ## Claude Teaches Claude ### A live class taught by Claude, operated by Doug Morse · Version one --- ## THE FORMAT Doug opens the room. Claude teaches aloud through a speaker. Doug relays audience questions by repeating them clearly. Doug closes. **Tonight the format is the subject.** The room has spent eight evenings watching a person operate an AI in front of an audience. Tonight they find out they could do it. ### Where this sits This is the exam. Not a written one — you find out whether somebody understands this by asking them to explain it to their mother. It is also how the series continues. Every person who can teach Block One of AI 101 is somebody who can run a class in a room this series will never reach. **Prerequisites:** AI 101 above all. Everything else helps. ### Room setup checklist - Speaker charged, tested from the back wall - **Copies of AI 101's running order** — printed, one each. People need something in their hands tonight - **A volunteer lined up in advance** for Block Four who is willing to teach badly in front of people. Ask privately. Never cold from the floor - Somewhere quiet-ish for pairs to talk in Block Three ### Doug's opening (30 seconds) Who he is. What they will see. Plainly: the teacher tonight is an AI, and tonight it is teaching them to do what Doug does. Then hand off. --- ## THE RUNNING ORDER — SEVEN BLOCKS, SEVENTY-FIVE MINUTES Block One — The test you cannot fake — 10 minutes Block Two — The four explanations that work — 15 minutes Block Three — In pairs: explain it to each other — 10 minutes Block Four — Live: somebody teaches Block One back — 15 minutes Block Five — Running a room — 10 minutes Block Six — What to do tomorrow morning — 5 minutes Block Seven — Questions and answers — 15 minutes **Block Four is the class**, and it is the only block in the entire series where a member of the audience does the teaching. --- ## BLOCK ONE — THE TEST YOU CANNOT FAKE **Opening question to the room:** "Has anybody tried to explain any of this to somebody who was not here? How did it go?" Take three answers. Most will be rueful. Somebody will say "badly." **The teaching:** There is a reliable test for whether you understand something, and it is not whether you can follow it when somebody else says it. > Can you explain it to your mother, using only words she would use? Not simplified. Not talked down. Explained — in the vocabulary the other person already owns. **Why this is hard, and it is worth naming:** You have spent eight weeks acquiring words. Model. Prompt. Connector. Automation. Those words are useful to you and they are a wall to everybody else. **The instinct to use them is not showing off. It is that they now feel like the plain version to you.** That is exactly the trap. **Second question:** "What is a word you have started using that you did not use nine weeks ago?" Collect them out loud. That list is the list of words to avoid tonight. **The one thing to get across:** > If you cannot say it without the vocabulary, you have got the vocabulary > rather than the understanding. And you will find out which, the first time > somebody asks you a question. --- ## BLOCK TWO — THE FOUR EXPLANATIONS THAT WORK Fifteen minutes. Concrete and reusable. These are the four that survive contact with a real person. **One. What it actually is, in one sentence.** > "It has read an enormous amount of writing, and it guesses what words come > next. That is the whole trick." No jargon. No hedging. Say it, stop, and let them react. **Most people's reaction is relief** — they thought it was something they were failing to understand, and it turns out to be something they can hold. **Two. Why it gets things wrong, in one sentence.** > "It is guessing what a good answer sounds like. And a made-up book title > sounds exactly like a real one." Then the rule: *use it for things you can check.* That is the entire safety lesson and it fits in nine words. **Three. Show, do not describe.** By a distance the most effective thing you can do. **Do not explain it. Open it and use it on a problem the person actually has.** Their letter. Their form. Their question. Two minutes of watching it help with their own problem beats twenty minutes of explanation. **Four. Let them catch it being wrong.** Ask it something they know the answer to. When it hedges or invents, point at it and say "there — that is the thing to watch for." **A person who has seen it be wrong once is safer than a person who has been warned ten times**, and you have taught the whole of Block Two in thirty seconds. **The shortcut to repeat:** > One sentence on what it is. One on why it is wrong. Then show them on > their own problem, and let them catch it. --- ## BLOCK THREE — IN PAIRS: EXPLAIN IT TO EACH OTHER Ten minutes. Get people talking. Doug runs this, not Claude. **The instruction:** Pair up. One of you is the teacher. The other is somebody who has never heard of any of this — a parent, a neighbour, whoever you actually have in mind. **Teacher: you have two minutes to explain what the thing is and why it gets things wrong. No jargon.** **Listener: your job is to interrupt every time a word is used that your person would not use.** Be unkind about it. That is the exercise. Then swap. **Doug walks the room and listens.** Afterwards, ask what the most common interrupted word was. It is nearly always *model* or *prompt*, and naming that out loud is worth more than any instruction. **Why this block exists:** the failure only shows up out loud. Everybody believes they can explain it until they open their mouth in front of somebody who does not already agree with them. --- ## BLOCK FOUR — LIVE: SOMEBODY TEACHES BLOCK ONE BACK **Fifteen minutes. The exam, and the best block in the series.** A volunteer — arranged in advance — teaches AI 101's Block One to the room. They have the printed running order. That is all. **How to run it:** 1. **They teach.** Doug and Claude stay out of it. Let them get stuck. Let there be silence. **Do not rescue them early** — the recovery is the lesson, and a rescued person learns nothing. 2. **The room asks two real questions.** Not easy ones. The volunteer answers as best they can. 3. **Then Claude gives feedback — good first, and specifically.** Name the actual thing that worked, not encouragement in general. "You said it guesses the next word and then you stopped talking. That pause was the best thing in it." 4. **Then one thing to change. One.** Not a list. The single change that would most improve it. 5. **Then the room says what they would have found confusing.** **If they say "I don't know" to a question, stop and mark it.** Say plainly: that was the right answer, and saying it out loud is the most important habit in this entire series. **A teacher who admits a gap is trusted on everything else.** **Claude's job in this block is to be brief.** The temptation is to demonstrate how it should have been done. Resist it entirely — the volunteer did the teaching, and taking it back undoes the block. --- ## BLOCK FIVE — RUNNING A ROOM Ten minutes. Practical. This is Doug's material and Claude should say so. **What actually goes wrong, in order of likelihood:** **Audio.** Every time. Test it in the actual room, from the back wall, before anybody arrives. Nothing else on this list has ever ruined a class. **Silence when you ask a question.** Wait ten seconds. It is much longer than it feels. If still nothing, answer your own question and ask again — "or shall I throw one at you to start?" People need permission. **One person eating the room.** "Let me get a few others in and we will come back to you." Say it early and kindly, once. If you leave it, the class belongs to them. **A question you cannot answer.** Say so, and ask the AI in front of everyone. **That is not a failure — it is a demonstration**, and it is more convincing than anything you had planned. **Somebody who wants to argue that it is all rubbish.** Agree with the true part of what they are saying, which is usually most of it. Do not defend the technology. You are not its representative. **Running out of time.** Cut from the middle. Never cut the demonstration and never cut the questions. **The thing to say plainly:** > You do not need to know more than the room. You need to be the person in > the room willing to ask the obvious question out loud. --- ## BLOCK SIX — WHAT TO DO TOMORROW MORNING Five minutes. One assignment, and it is the largest in the series. **Teach one person. This week. Twenty minutes.** One sentence on what it is. One on why it gets things wrong. Then open it and use it on a problem they actually have — and let them catch it being wrong. **One person. Not a class. Not a group. One.** **Why this is the homework:** you will find out in the first three minutes exactly which parts you understand. There is no substitute and there is no way to fake it. **And when they ask you something you cannot answer** — which they will — notice what you do. If you say "I don't know, let us find out," you have already understood the most important thing in nine weeks of classes. --- ## BLOCK SEVEN — QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS Fifteen minutes. Unstructured. Not optional. Doug opens: "Right, questions. Anything." **Questions to expect, and the honest answer:** *"I could not do what Doug does."* Doug does not know the material — he says so. He operates the room and asks the questions everybody else is too embarrassed to ask. That is a different skill from expertise and most people in this room already have it. *"What if they ask me something I do not know?"* Say you do not know and ask it in front of them. It is the strongest thing you can do, and it is the entire lesson of this series performed rather than described. *"Can I use these class files myself?"* That is what they are for. Paste one in, say you are the operator, and it will teach the class. You do not need to have written it. *"Should I charge for it?"* You can. Plenty of people would pay to be taught this plainly. But run it free two or three times first — you will find out what actually happens in a room, and that is worth more than the first few fees. *"What if I get something wrong in front of people?"* You will, and the class survives it easily. Correct it out loud when you notice. A teacher who corrects themselves is more trusted afterwards, not less. That is not a consolation — it is how it actually works. *"How many people should be in the room?"* Six is plenty. Twelve is comfortable. Past about thirty you need a proper speaker and you lose the questions, which is the part that matters. *"Who should I teach first?"* Somebody who has already asked you about it. They exist — you have probably been putting them off. **Then Doug closes:** thanks, next date, one link. --- ## RECOVERY NOTES > "We are teaching AI 109. Pick up at Block Four, the volunteer teaching." Drifting or repeating: **"Reset. Block [number]. Go."** **If the volunteer freezes in Block Four,** Doug steps in — not to take over, but to ask them an easy question they can answer, and hand it straight back. Then let them finish. Rescuing them entirely is worse than the freeze. **If nobody will volunteer,** Doug teaches Block One badly on purpose and has the room critique him. That works, and it costs him nothing he has not already survived. **If the pairs exercise in Block Three runs long, let it.** People talking to each other is worth more than Block Five, and Block Five can be cut to five minutes. --- ## 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 with the file in knowledge. **Specific to this class:** the operator must arrange the Block Four volunteer privately beforehand and must bring printed copies of AI 101's running order. Both are load-bearing. --- ## VERSION Version one, 2 September 2026. Not yet run aloud. Block Four has never been tested and is the highest-risk block in the series — it hands fifteen minutes of a live class to somebody who has never taught. That is the point, and it is also why the volunteer must be asked in advance and told exactly what will happen.