You caught it hallucinating in Level 01. Now that you're using it for real work, the stakes are real too. This level draws the lines once — what to verify, what to protect, where help becomes cheating — so you never have to figure them out mid-crisis.
Trust the model with thinking — drafts, ideas, explanations, practice. Verify anything that points at the real world — because that's exactly where it fills gaps with fiction.
Names · dates · numbers · statistics · quotes · links · prices · laws · medical claims · anything you'd be embarrassed to repeat wrong. Thirty seconds of checking beats a week of walking back something false. And remember Level 01: its confidence level tells you nothing — the invented fact and the real one arrive in the same tone.
The quick method: take the most specific claim in the answer and search it. If the first real source disagrees, distrust the whole answer's facts — the reasoning might still be useful, but the "facts" are now suspect.
The never-paste list from Level 03 stands: passwords, ID numbers, other people's private stuff. Two additions now that you're a heavier user:
Don't feed it enough to reconstruct where you'll be and when — school, schedule, address. It doesn't need those to help you.
Pasting your friend's meltdown texts to get reply advice shares their private moment with a company. Summarize instead: "my friend is upset because…" — the advice is just as good, and no one's trust got spent.
One test settles every case: could you defend the work without the AI in the room? Explain it, answer questions on it, redo the core of it. If yes — it helped you learn. If no — it replaced you, and it'll cost you exactly when it matters: the exam, the interview, the job.
"Write my essay." Submit. Learn nothing, risk everything — and modern teachers have read a thousand AI essays.
"Here's my draft — attack my argument." "Quiz me until I can explain this cold." "Explain where my working went wrong, but don't solve it for me."
AI's default writing sounds like everyone. If you accept every rewrite wholesale, your writing converges on that sound — and your voice is worth more than polish. The habit: let it draft or critique, then make the final pass yours. You decide what stays. That's not just integrity — it's how you stay distinct.
Drafts and ideas: trust freely. Names, dates, numbers: thirty seconds of checking, every time.
The never-paste list, plus location and other people's content. Decided once, kept forever.
That one question settles every schoolwork case — and keeps the learning yours.
← back to all 10 levels · stuck on anything? ask peter.