Time-and-Effort Reporting for the AI Age

Staff who split their time across multiple grants had to do time-and-effort reporting: a written record of which hours went to which program. Nobody loved it. But without it, nobody could prove the grant paid for grant work — and "trust me" is not documentation.

AI has the same problem, wearing new clothes.

When a decision is part human and part machine — a loan review, a hiring screen, a support answer — someone needs to record which part was which. What did the AI suggest? What did the human check, change, or override? Without that record, you can't explain the decision later, and you can't fix the process when it goes wrong.

I'm not suggesting timesheets for robots. I'm suggesting a habit: for decisions that matter, note the human's role in one line. "AI drafted; I verified the figures." "Model flagged; I made the call."

Grants taught me that the unglamorous record is what protects you. In the AI age, the record that matters most is a simple one: the human was here.

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