Show Your Work

When I taught high school in northern Zambia, the rule was: show your work. The answer alone earned partial credit. The reasoning earned the rest. My federal grants years enforced the same rule — every drawdown of funds came with documentation of why. What the money was for, who approved it, what it accomplished. The answer was never enough. The work behind it was the point.

AI is all answer, no work. A model produces a decision — approved, denied, flagged, drafted — and the reasoning evaporates. Nobody records what the system considered, what the human verified, or why the outcome was accepted.

"Show your work" is the fix, and it's gloriously low-tech. For decisions that matter, keep a one-line record: what the AI produced, what the human checked, and the reason for the final call. Not a novel — a receipt.

Teachers and grant officers agreed on this for the same reason: the work is where the thinking lives. If your AI can't show its work, or your team won't record theirs, you don't have a decision process. You have an answer machine.

Show the work.

I explain frameworks; I don't give legal counsel.