Part 4 Review
From protecting your information to AI law · one layer deeper · DAY 36-45
This is the box that walks back through Part 4's ten days. Parts 1 to 3 were about what AI can do; Part 4 was about the shapes it takes when that goes wrong.
This goes one layer deeper than Beginner and gets to why it happens. No quiz and no experiment — read and move on. Go to Advanced to dig in, or Beginner for a lighter pass.
DAY 36 · Protecting your information
Once you type it in, it's out of your hands
Assume that whatever you type into AI leaves your hands the moment you send it. Leave out the things that can pinpoint you — name, address, phone number — and the answer comes out the same. Your friend's face or phone number isn't yours to post anywhere.
"A 9th-grade boy" on its own could be hundreds of thousands of people. Add a school and a homeroom and it's thirty; add tutoring times and it's one person. Privacy laws work this way too: if it can easily be combined to tell who you are, it counts as personal.
DAY 37 · Copyright
"Copying" got one more box to check
"Copying" used to be judged only by how much the result looked like the original. Now there's a second question: what did it learn from before it made anything? Countries answer it differently and court cases are still open, so learn the issue instead of a rule.
The old standard didn't disappear — a result that looks alike is still a problem. What's new is a box called what it learned from. That's why people now argue even when the results look nothing alike.
DAY 38 · Deepfakes
Your eyes can't tell — the source can
You can't tell by looking — the old trick of counting fingers barely works anymore. Instead of picking apart the screen, follow where it came from. Is it where it should be, and did anyone else film it too?
The clues that stopped working all look inside the screen: fingers, blinking, image quality. The clues that work now all look outside the screen: source, other angles, a sudden demand. Inside the screen keeps getting more perfect, so move your eyes outside it.
DAY 39 · Bias in AI
It isn't hate, it's a lean
AI doesn't decide to dislike anyone. If the data it learned from leans one way, its answers lean the same way — that's all. So when a question sorts or picks people, add one more: "What about other cases?"
Programs that guess a person's sex from a face photo were tested by skin tone and sex. The error rate was highest for darker-skinned women's faces. It was lowest for lighter-skinned men's faces.
DAY 40 · Saying when AI made it
One line of credit is a fence around your share
Saying you used AI isn't a confession — it's a name tag. Stay quiet and even the parts you did well get doubted. Split the assignment into pieces and write one line on who did each. That's it.
Split the assignment into topic, sources, draft, polish and fact-check. Mark each piece with whether you did it or AI did. Which piece, how you used it, and what you changed — those three make the line complete.
DAY 41 · Homework and AI: where's the line
Did anything stay in your head?
The test isn't a long rulebook, it's one sentence: did anything stay in your head? Hand the whole thing over and only the finished product is left — you can't explain it. Ask only about the stuck spots and rewrite it yourself, and you keep the work and the skill.
When you get homework, first ask what it wants you to learn. Then try it with your own brain, even for 5 minutes. If you're stuck, ask for a hint, not the answer, and write the last version in your own words.
DAY 42 · Fake news
Spotting it is about order, not a sharp eye
Spotting fake news is about order, not about having a sharp eye. Who said it first, when it happened, whether it's anywhere else — just those three, in turn. If even one of them is empty, stop there. Stopping is a decision too.
Box one is the source — trace it back to whoever said it first. Box two is the date — old stories get passed around as if they happened today. The strongest is box three: did anyone else report it separately and say the same thing?
DAY 43 · AI scams
Hang up, then call back on a number you know
AI scams follow the same steps every time: copy, pretend, rush, demand. Stopping it is almost boring — hang up, then call back on a number you already knew. If it really is your family, calling back changes nothing.
Scams aim for a voice you know, the rush of "right now," and making you decide alone. Flip each one: hang up and call back, pause a beat, tell an adult nearby. Don't try to judge it by ear — it's easier to change who places the call.
DAY 44 · Not leaning on it too much
Are you the one deciding how much to hand over?
Nobody is saying don't use it — the whole point is whether you decide how much to hand over. It's not 0 and not 100: the most stays with you in the middle. Give it 5 minutes with your own brain first, then hand it over.
A research team ran a writing experiment and looked at the people who handed more to AI. They reported that group couldn't remember sentences they had just written — even though the writing was fine. It's a preliminary study still under review, so don't memorize it as the final word.
DAY 45 · AI has laws too
The bigger the risk, the stricter the rules
AI has laws too. But they don't treat every AI the same way. They sort uses into boxes by how risky they are and set different rules for each. South Korea's AI Basic Act took effect in January 2026.
Banned outright, high-risk, must disclose, minimal — four boxes. The banned box can't be used at all; the high-risk box has to pass checks and be supervised by people. The must-disclose box means saying it's AI, and the minimal box has no special rules.
Part 4 in one line
Part 4 in one line: the things to watch out for aren't a list to fear, they're an order to check in. Once before you type, once before you believe, once before you hand it over.
Part 5 goes the other way. Everything so far was the view from outside; next is what happens inside AI.
Learn more
- Privacy Portal (Personal Information Protection Commission, Korea) — check where your information has been used (in Korean)privacy.go.kr
- Gemini Apps Privacy Hub (Google) — the official page on how your chats are used and how to turn that offsupport.google.com/gemini/answer/13594961
- Japan's approach to AI and copyright (Agency for Cultural Affairs, 2024) — a government drawing the limits of its own "training is free" clausebunka.go.jp/seisaku/bunkashingikai/chosakuken/pdf/9…
- Directive (EU) 2019/790, Article 4 — the rule that lets rights holders reserve their work from trainingeur-lex.europa.eu/eli/dir/2019/790/oj/eng
- SynthID-Text, Nature (2024) — planting invisible marks in textnature.com/articles/s41586-024-08025-4
- C2PA Content Credentials specifications — an open standard for recording where and how a file was madec2pa.org/specifications
- Gender Shades (2018) — face-classification programs tested by skin tone and sexproceedings.mlr.press/v81/buolamwini18a.html
- NIST IR 8280 (2019) — an official report measuring demographic differences in face recognition at scalenvlpubs.nist.gov/nistpubs/ir/2019/NIST.IR.8280.pdf
- Guidance for generative AI in education and research, UNESCO (2023) — official guidance on using AI in schoolunesco.org/en/articles/guidance-generative-ai-educa…
- SIFT (The Four Moves), 2019 — the original post proposing the four checking moveshapgood.us/2019/06/19/sift-the-four-moves
- Criminals Use Generative Artificial Intelligence to Facilitate Financial Fraud, FBI IC3 (2024) — the official warning on AI-made voices, photos and videos in scamsic3.gov/PSA/2024/PSA241203
- Your Brain on ChatGPT (2025, preprint) — a look at memory in people who wrote with AIarxiv.org/abs/2506.08872
- AI Act (European Commission) — the risk tiers explained on one page by the people who wrote themdigital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/regulator…