Guide the Climb

For AI Ambassadors — students who climbed the Ladder and now walk others up it.

An ambassador is not the best AI user in the room. An ambassador makes it easier for someone else to start. Most people you help will have never tried AI, or were told using it is cheating. Your job is not to impress them. Sit with them while they play, and let them make their own judgments.

Two reasons to teach it: it spreads an important skill to students who would never start on their own, and teaching something is the fastest way to learn it properly yourself.

The standing rule

The climb is theirs. Never touch their keyboard. The moment you type, the exercise becomes a demonstration, and they learn only that you can do it. Whatever happens on the screen, their hands put it there.

Becoming an ambassador

Open to any student in the college, any major, with no prior AI experience needed. There is an application, and it is open now.

Spots are limited. We expect more strong applications than places, so selection is competitive and finishing the Ladder does not guarantee one. We would rather tell you now than after you have done fifteen exercises. Ambassadors receive a $200 gift card.

Print the worksheet (PDF) ↓

Start here. Every question the application asks, on paper, in the order it asks them. Fill it in as you go, and by the time you reach the application your answers are already written.

Three things have to be done before you apply:

1. Climb all fifteen exercises yourself. Keep your log — you will need to quote it.
2. Write your calibration memo: one argument about how your judgment changed across the whole climb — not a rung-by-rung recap.
3. Walk one person onto Rung 1. Report what they said while they were doing it — their words, not your summary. Anything that surprised you: a hesitation, a question you did not expect, a moment it clicked.

If you are not selected. The Ladder is still yours. Your log, your memo and your walk-through are the beginning of a portfolio — they show an employer your judgment changing, which no certificate does. The climb was never the application.

Dates. Climb at your own pace. Applications are open now; we will announce the closing date here before it comes.

Guide only the rungs you have climbed. If you are at Rung 3, you can guide Play and Direct. Do not guide Verify until you have traced your own claims to their sources.

What to do at each rung — and what never to do

The climber’s page tells them what to do. This one tells you what not to.
Rung	What you do	What you never do
1 · Play	Hand them the keyboard, point at exercise 01, and stay relaxed. Laugh at the results with them. Make it clear that playing around is the whole assignment.	Demonstrate. If you show off, they conclude they could never do this.
2 · Direct	Let them write the weak prompt first, then ask: what did your edit change, and what didn’t?	Dictate the prompt. A prompt you wrote teaches them nothing about steering.
3 · Apply	Ask them to bring real work of their own — from their major, their job, their life. Ask where the answers started thinning.	Judge the output for them. The column they are filling is their own performance, not the AI’s.
4 · Interrogate	Ask which disagreement matters. Then be quiet while they decide.	Break the tie. If you pick the winner, the call was yours, not theirs.
5 · Verify	Tell them before they start that “I couldn’t find a source” is a passing answer.	Supply the source. If you find it for them, they have not done the exercise.

You are a reader, not a grader. When someone shows you what they kept, do not evaluate it. Ask what they judged. On this ladder, the evaluation is the exercise.

The hardest part of this role is restraint. Every rung will tempt you to show instead of wait. Wait — the climb only counts if they do it themselves.