Massive AI policy papers drop fast. Your team still needs decisions today. Here’s a quick, reliable way to turn 100+ pages into actions in 30 minutes.
This playbook was sparked by Simon Willison’s first look at discussion around an “Encyclical on Artificial Intelligence.” Rather than wait for perfect summaries, use the workflow below to extract what matters—now.
The 30-minute workflow
- Get clean text (3 min): If it’s a PDF, ensure it has selectable text. If not, run OCR (e.g., OCRmyPDF) or export with a reliable PDF-to-text tool. Keep page numbers.
- Chunk and index (5 min): Use a text splitter (by headings or ~1,000 tokens). If you’ve got RAG tools handy (e.g., LangChain/ LlamaIndex), build a quick local index for retrieval.
- Ask structured questions (10 min): Scope, definitions, obligations, prohibited uses, timelines, penalties, reporting, and carve-outs. Prioritize what changes your roadmap in the next 90 days.
- Force citations (5 min): Require page/section quotes for every answer. If the model can’t find it, it must say “Not found in document.” No quotes, no trust.
- Draft a 1‑pager (5 min): Executive summary, 3 near‑term impacts, 3 risks, 3 actions. Link each bullet to source pages for fast audit.
- Map to a framework (2 min): Align findings to the NIST AI RMF pillars (Govern, Map, Measure, Manage) to slot into existing controls. See NIST AI RMF.
- Decide owners (0–2 min): Tag Legal for obligations, Product for scope/roadmap, Security for controls, and Comms for disclosures.
Prompt kit (copy/paste)
- Core: “You are a strict analyst. Answer only with quotes + page numbers from THIS document. If not found, say ‘Not found in document.’ No outside knowledge.”
- Scope: “List who/what is covered. Quote definitions of ‘AI system,’ ‘provider,’ ‘deployer,’ and any risk tiers. Cite page/section.”
- Obligations: “Summarize required actions by role (provider, deployer, auditor). Include timelines and penalties. Quote and cite.”
- Prohibitions: “List prohibited or high‑risk practices. Quote exact language and thresholds. Cite.”
- Impact brief: “Produce a 1‑page brief: 3 impacts, 3 risks, 3 actions. Each bullet ends with page numbers in parentheses.”
Guardrails to keep summaries trustworthy
- Retrieval first: Use RAG or paste-only text. Disable web browsing to avoid mixing sources.
- Quote or it didn’t happen: Every claim must include a direct quote + page numbers.
- Unknowns are valuable: Prefer “Not found in document” over guesses. Log gaps as follow-up questions.
- Compare drafts: Run two independent summaries and diff the answers to surface disagreements.
- Human-in-the-loop: Have Legal/Product verify the 10 most consequential quotes before shipping decisions.
What this means for teams
- Founders: Budget time for policy sprints after major releases. Treat them like incident responses for governance.
- PMs: Translate obligations into backlog items with owners and due dates. Tie each to a cited passage.
- Engineers: Prepare “switches” in features to comply with definitions and thresholds that may trigger obligations.
- Policy/Legal: Maintain a living matrix mapping requirements to NIST AI RMF controls for audit readiness.
Further reading: the NIST AI Risk Management Framework and the OECD AI Principles offer solid anchors for aligning obligations to controls.
Takeaway: Don’t wait for perfect explainers. With citations-first prompts and a lightweight RAG setup, you can turn any major AI policy drop into clear, defensible actions—fast.
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