How to Think With AI, Not Just Use It
Most people use AI to get outputs. They delegate tasks, collect answers, and move on. That approach gets you something, but it costs you something too — it costs you the thinking that would have made you better at your work.
This book teaches a different way. Instead of delegating to AI, you can converse with it — brainstorming, challenging assumptions, stress-testing reasoning, and exploring angles you would not have considered alone. When you do this, the AI does not replace your thinking. It amplifies it.
You do not need a technical background. You do not need to write code. You need curiosity, a willingness to think critically, and a problem worth solving.
The book is organized into the following sections:
- What Is AI?
- What Are Large Language Models?
- The Delegation Trap
- Does AI Make Us Dumber?
- The Conversation Loop
- AI Last
- Staying Critical
- RTCF: Starting Conversations Well
- Prompt Chaining: Building on What You Started
- Eight Techniques for Deeper Thinking
- Using AI to Help You Use AI
- VET Your AI: The Push-Back Framework
- A Conversation Across Disciplines
- Becoming More Capable
- Prompt Structuring Frameworks (RTCF, CRAFT, CO-STAR, RISEN, APE)
- Quick Reference Cards
- Further Reading
- Interactive Tools
This book is a standalone guide to thinking with AI. It has a companion book that applies the same methodology to Python programming, but neither requires the other.
- Converse Python, Partner AI: The same conversation-based methodology, through the lens of Python development
Other books by the same author cover specific technical tracks:
- Think Python, Direct AI: Computational Thinking for Beginners
- Code Python, Consult AI: Python Fundamentals for the AI Era
- Ship Python, Orchestrate AI: Professional Python in the AI Era
- Build Web, Guide AI: Business Web Development with AI
This book is being developed as a Quarto project, with content written in Markdown format.
To build the book locally:
quarto renderThe rendered output will be in the _book/ directory.
This work is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).
Michael Borck — GitHub
This book is part of the books.borck.education series. Publishing (PDF, EPUB, llm.txt, chatbot, cover generation) is handled by the book-publisher repo.
| Path | Purpose |
|---|---|
index.qmd |
Preface (landing page) |
_quarto.yml |
HTML-only Quarto config |
cover.png |
Cover image |
copyright-page.tex |
Copyright page for PDF |
pdf-header.tex |
LaTeX header for PDF |
epub-styles.css |
EPUB styles |
scripts/ |
Build scripts (preprocess.py = print preprocessing hook) |
tools/ |
Downloadable resources referenced in the book (quizzes, interactive tools) |
notes/ |
Working notes, outlines, planning docs (not published) |
rag-documents/ |
Generated RAG chunks for chatbot |
_book/ |
Rendered output (gitignored) |
_print_source/ |
Generated print source (gitignored) |