FAST-16 Reading List: Working Well with AI
Provider: 7formations | Course: FAST-16 | Instructor: Wadood Chaudhary | Links verified October 29, 2026
Practical readings on asking AI well and checking what it gives back. Vendor prompting guides are tool-specific; the habits transfer to whatever assistant your employer approves.
Suggested reading: the source book
Svekis, Laurence Lars. AI Literacy for All Employees: Understanding the Role of Artificial Intelligence in the Modern Workplace. Kindle edition, published February 25, 2026. 15 chapters plus an appendix quick-reference guide.
This course is built on chapters 6, 7, 13, and 15 of Laurence Lars Svekis's book and is presented by Wadood Chaudhary for 7formations. All course materials are written in our own words; the book is recommended reading, not a script. Read the mapped chapters before or right after each session. Where the book and 2026 sources differ, the course follows the dated sources listed below and says so.
| Session | Book chapters (Svekis, 2026) | What this course adds |
|---|---|---|
| Session 1 | 6. Prompting AI Effectively | Adds when to start a new chat, giving the AI an approved source to work from, and tool-neutral demos in the employer's approved assistant |
| Session 2 | 7. Evaluating AI Outputs | Adds lateral reading (SIFT), checking that cited sources exist, and a caution on the book's 'ask the AI for sources' tip, since assistants can invent citations |
| Session 3 | 13. Real-World AI Case Studies; 15. Best Practices for Responsible AI Use | Recasts the five book cases with fictional Massachusetts employers and adds two public incidents (Mata v. Avianca, 2023; Moffatt v. Air Canada, 2024) |
The book is listed as a required reading in each session below, with the companion AI Literacy Studio site as optional practice.
How to use. Required readings take 20 to 45 minutes per session and are done before (or right after) the session they support. Optional readings go deeper. 'Living page' means the publisher updates it continuously; read the current version. Reading times are estimates for the parts that matter to this course, not the whole document.
Session 1: Asking well: prompting basics
Required
-
Laurence Lars Svekis, AI Literacy for All Employees: Understanding the Role of Artificial Intelligence in the Modern Workplace (book)
Publisher: Laurence Lars Svekis (author); Kindle edition sold on Amazon | Date: Published February 25, 2026 | Reading time: about 30 min
URL: https://www.amazon.com/Literacy-All-Employees-Understanding-Intelligence-ebook/dp/B0GQ1LDHGH
Why read: Chapter 6 (Prompting AI Effectively): the four elements of a good prompt, techniques, and common mistakes. -
Effective Prompts for AI: The Essentials
Publisher: MIT Sloan Teaching & Learning Technologies | Date: Living page | Reading time: about 10 min
URL: https://mitsloanedtech.mit.edu/ai/basics/effective-prompts/
Why read: A short, tool-neutral guide to clear prompts.
Optional
-
Get started writing prompts in Microsoft Copilot
Publisher: Microsoft Support | Date: Living page | Reading time: about 10 min
URL: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365-copilot/get-started-writing-prompts-in-microsoft-365-copilot
Why read: Prompting in Microsoft Copilot, if that is your employer's tool. -
Google Workspace with Gemini Prompt Guide
Publisher: Google Workspace | Date: Living page (guide updated periodically) | Reading time: about 15 min
URL: https://workspace.google.com/learning/content/gemini-prompt-guide
Why read: Google's Workspace prompt guide, with role-based examples. -
Prompt engineering best practices for ChatGPT
Publisher: OpenAI Help Center | Date: Living page (updated October 2026) | Reading time: about 10 min
URL: https://help.openai.com/en/articles/10032626-prompt-engineering-best-practices-for-chatgpt
Why read: OpenAI's best practices for prompts.
Session 2: Checking well: evaluating and verifying AI output
Required
-
Laurence Lars Svekis, AI Literacy for All Employees: Understanding the Role of Artificial Intelligence in the Modern Workplace (book)
Publisher: Laurence Lars Svekis (author); Kindle edition sold on Amazon | Date: Published February 25, 2026 | Reading time: about 30 min
URL: https://www.amazon.com/Literacy-All-Employees-Understanding-Intelligence-ebook/dp/B0GQ1LDHGH
Why read: Chapter 7 (Evaluating AI Outputs): the five error types and the five-step evaluation. Note the course's caution on asking AI for its sources. -
SIFT (The Four Moves)
Publisher: Mike Caulfield, Hapgood | Date: June 19, 2019 | Reading time: about 10 min
URL: https://hapgood.us/2019/06/19/sift-the-four-moves/
Why read: The four moves of SIFT from the person who created it. -
When AI Gets It Wrong: Addressing AI Hallucinations and Bias
Publisher: MIT Sloan Teaching & Learning Technologies | Date: Living page | Reading time: about 10 min
URL: https://mitsloanedtech.mit.edu/ai/basics/addressing-ai-hallucinations-and-bias/
Why read: Why AI gets things wrong and how to catch it.
Optional
-
Learning to Verify (Caulfield and Wineburg)
Publisher: American Educator, American Federation of Teachers | Date: Spring 2025 | Reading time: about 20 min
URL: https://www.aft.org/ae/spring2025/caulfield_wineburg
Why read: How lateral reading and verification apply when AI is in the mix (Caulfield and Wineburg, 2025). -
Media Literacy: SIFT
Publisher: Princeton University Library | Date: Living page | Reading time: about 10 min
URL: https://libguides.princeton.edu/medialiteracy/sift
Why read: A one-page library guide to SIFT. -
Reduce hallucinations
Publisher: Anthropic (Claude Docs) | Date: Living page | Reading time: about 10 min
URL: https://platform.claude.com/docs/en/test-and-evaluate/strengthen-guardrails/reduce-hallucinations
Why read: Practical ways to reduce invented answers: allow 'I don't know', ask for quotes.
Session 3: Learning from cases and building a safe workflow
Required
- Laurence Lars Svekis, AI Literacy for All Employees: Understanding the Role of Artificial Intelligence in the Modern Workplace (book)
Publisher: Laurence Lars Svekis (author); Kindle edition sold on Amazon | Date: Published February 25, 2026 | Reading time: about 40 min
URL: https://www.amazon.com/Literacy-All-Employees-Understanding-Intelligence-ebook/dp/B0GQ1LDHGH
Why read: Chapters 13 (Real-World AI Case Studies) and 15 (Best Practices for Responsible AI Use).
Optional
-
Navigating the Jagged Technological Frontier (Dell'Acqua et al.), HBS Working Paper 24-013
Publisher: Harvard Business School | Date: September 2023 | Reading time: about 20 min
URL: https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=64700
Why read: Evidence that AI helps on some tasks and hurts on others, which is why the workflow starts by defining the task. -
Generative AI at Work (Brynjolfsson, Li, and Raymond), NBER Working Paper 31161
Publisher: National Bureau of Economic Research | Date: April 2023 (revised) | Reading time: about 20 min
URL: https://www.nber.org/papers/w31161
Why read: A real deployment with measured results, useful as a sixth case. -
Artificial Intelligence Risk Management Framework: Generative Artificial Intelligence Profile, NIST AI 600-1
Publisher: NIST | Date: July 2024 | Reading time: about 20 min
URL: https://nvlpubs.nist.gov/nistpubs/ai/NIST.AI.600-1.pdf
Why read: The NIST Generative AI Profile; skim the list of risks to see where your workflow card fits. -
AI Literacy Studio (companion site to the book)
Publisher: Laurence Lars Svekis, DiscoveryVIP | Date: Living page | Reading time: about 15 min
URL: https://discoveryvip.com/ai-literacy-studio/
Why read: The book's companion site, with practice material.
Link verification
Every URL above was checked on October 29, 2026 with an HTTP request (status 200 after redirects) or, where the publisher's site blocks automated requests (mass.gov, dol.gov, hhs.gov, cdc.gov, openai.com), by loading the page and confirming its title and content. Links that returned 404 during checking were dropped and are not listed. The instructor re-checks links before each cohort.