\cleardoublepage \part{Seeing Clearly} \setbookpart{Seeing Clearly}

Part IV: Seeing Clearly

The book has given the reader a test, a notation, nine instincts and nine rules of thumb. This part puts them to work and then says what the author thinks will happen next. Chapter 19 collects the rules, maps every question of the test to the chapter that explains it, and applies the rules to three documents the reader is likely to meet: a board paper that presents an AI programme, an architecture review of a system that acts, and a public procurement of a service with AI inside it. Chapter 20 does what the rest of the book has deliberately not done: it gives the author's own projections for the landscape over the next years, labelled as his judgement and as speculation where that is what they are, and it closes with what the data show, what is possible, and what the reader can do.

The stance of the book is possibilist, a word borrowed from Hans Rosling: neither the optimist who expects the landscape to improve on its own, nor the pessimist who expects it to end in the empty corner, but someone who looks at the data, sees both the problems and the progress, and asks what can be done. Every statement about the future in this part carries its label, observable, expected or speculation, as every such statement has throughout the book.

Chapters in this part:

  • Chapter 19, The Rules of Thumb in Practice, collects the nine rules of thumb, maps each test question to the chapter that explains it, and applies the rules to a board paper, an architecture review and a public procurement.
  • Chapter 20, The Next Years, and a Conclusion, gives the author's own projections for the landscape, labelled as such, and concludes: what the data show, what is possible, and what the reader can do.

What you will carry out of this part:

  • The nine rules of thumb on one page, with the question each answers
  • Three worked readings of documents you will meet
  • The author's own view of the next years, kept apart from the evidence and labelled

The appendices give the reference card, the hand-drawing pages, the rules on one page and the methods behind every number.