Do I give away what I told the university to "sell"?

08 September 2026

The content is largely free now. Not because I think it should be — because it is. The models, the frameworks, the standing advice to check everything: none of it is behind a wall, and most of it is a search away. That is the fact this series has been circling. What’s worth paying for is the part that can’t be downloaded — the judgement, the teaching, the standing beside someone while they get it wrong and then right.

I have a guide that is more teaching than content — originally called How to Use AI in Your Project — for some of my 2026 students.

For a while I kept the guide to myself and assumed that’s a great strategy. It’s intellectual property, after all — I wrote it, I could keep it. My trade secret. My edge over everyone else. Naturally.

Then I looked at what I was keeping. Half of it is tool-specific — which model does what, roughly what it costs, where it fails — and that half is stale within months — and one Gemini ask away from anyone anyway. The other half is a framework built from ideas already in circulation. There is no secret in it. I had a depreciating document, guarded as though it were an appreciating one. At the same time, I think we cannot get to the point of responsible AI use fast enough — that is one of the “things that matter”, at least in my view.

I share it for free because I think blind use of AI is silly at best, dangerous at worst. Non-use, or not-permitting its use, however, is equally silly — and in essence the same argument I have made in the Third Nexus series — it’s teaching an idea based on knowledge of a time your teachers were taught — and potentially looked at with some fear. But non-use is also leaving real value on the table, because AI is a really interesting tool. And that’s what I see it mainly as. Yet another tool. A powerful one, maybe. Hand the decision-making over to it, though, and things can go wrong — impressively so. A tool comes with instructions on how it works; using it well takes teaching. And the right application needs the right context and an intentional method. Tools, instructions, teaching and method are developing so fast that it’s hard to keep up, even for experts in the field — which, by the way, I am not. But the overarching principles have not changed — at all, especially not in a research setting.

The teaching, the part with value, is not in the table of the tools — they are likely outdated already, and have been incomplete from the beginning — a starter kit, at best. It may not even be on the pages of the guide at all — I hope the guide is still good content. But the teaching is in using the guide — adapting it to a real project, working beside a team through the parts that go wrong and learning from it.

That part doesn’t copy off a sheet. So use it, but honour the CC-BY. Use it, adapt it, sell it if you can — if it does well, a donation wouldn’t go astray — but the one condition is that my name stays on it. Take it, change it, let me know what you changed, liked or thought was useless — or where it’s simply wrong.

How to Use AI in Your Project — and the story of how it came to exist — is here.

This post is part of The Third Nexus Series - What a university is for when the content is free and,

Data on Deck - Picture yourself in Enterprise’s captain’s chair with a bridge full of Datas. (Or: How to Use AI in Your Project.)