Issue 28 companion · Nobody Knows Who Is Actually Using AI
The Real-Usage Snapshot
Seats and logins tell you what you bought. This tells you what changed. Before you fill in your own snapshot, learn what real, high-value collaboration looks like by role - so you can recognise it, find who is quietly doing it well, and spread it.
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What you are opening
Built for this issue. It follows the argument you have just read, one step at a time.
A live status. It tells you what is still blank, because a half-filled sheet changes nothing.
Saved on your device. Close the tab and come back to it.
Prints clean. Take it into the room on paper if that is how the room works.
The Signal
The Real-Usage Snapshot
Issue 28 companion · Nobody Knows Who Is Actually Using AI
The Real-Usage Snapshot
Seats and logins tell you what you bought. This tells you what changed. Before you fill in your own snapshot, learn what real, high-value collaboration looks like by role - so you can recognise it, find who is quietly doing it well, and spread it.
A licence count tells you how much AI you bought. It does not tell you how much AI your business uses.
Nothing answered yet
What real usage looks like, by role
The same seat can be shallow or deep. Look at how the person actually works with AI, and what a high-value pattern looks like in their world.
It removes hours of archaeology, not judgement; the human still frames the question.
Compliance / risk
Policy-gap analysis, regulatory-change summaries.
A named human signs the exposure; AI never closes a risk on its own.
Government / public sector
Role
How they actually use AI
Signal of high-value use
Policy analyst
Synthesises consultations, drafts briefings, lays out options.
It steelmans the opposing position so the recommendation survives scrutiny.
Caseworker
Triages cases, drafts standard responses, surfaces the exceptions.
It flags the edge cases; a human decides eligibility and owns the outcome.
Procurement officer
Summarises tenders, compares bids against criteria.
A human owns the award; AI only makes the comparison legible.
Comms officer
Drafts public notices and responses at speed.
Nothing publishes without the last-human check on facts and tone.
The depth of the collaboration
Two people can both "use AI" and be worlds apart. Look for how deep the collaboration goes - and whether a human is still doing the judging.
Level 1 · Autocomplete & search
Faster typing, quick answers. Real, but shallow - it touches no decision.
Level 2 · Draft & edit
AI produces a first pass, a human shapes it. Useful, and where most people stop.
Level 3 · Decision support
AI gathers, compares, and flags; the human decides. This is where value starts to show on a number.
Level 4 · Adversarial loop
The human forms a view, AI attacks it, the human sharpens. Deepest, rarest, most valuable - the amplifying effect.
Your snapshot
Now map your own. For each team, capture the workflow, the decision it touches, how deep the use goes, what changed, and - the part everyone skips - who is quietly doing it well and where it began.
Team
Workflow using AI
Decision it touches
Depth 1-4
What changed
Champion / where it began
Who to find, and copy
The quiet champion in a low-login team is worth more than a whole department of Level 1 usage. Name them, learn their pattern, spread it.
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