Decision Desk · Issue 07 · complete public learning edition

Can People Trust This AI Explanation?

Decide when AI may translate complex authoritative information without changing its meaning, hiding uncertainty, blocking access, or becoming individualized professional advice.

Begin the issue Run the Fidelity Test

Learning time90 minutes

Teaching12 cumulative lessons

InstrumentFidelity Test

BoundaryExplanation—not advice

Fidelity chain

Authority → meaning → audience → access → action → correction.

An explanation succeeds only when people can reach, understand, and safely use the meaning the authoritative source actually supports.

Freeze source and controlling meaning

Gate

Preserve conditions, exceptions, and uncertainty

Gate

Define audience and consequence

Gate

Provide language, disability, and format access

Gate

Keep advice and escalation boundaries visible

Gate

Monitor reliance, correct, and retest

Gate

Complete issue curriculum

Twelve cumulative lessons.

Use supplied fictional notices only. Never enter personal health, legal, financial, benefits, safety, or eligibility facts.

Issue 07

Identify authoritative meaning

Open

Start with the controlling source, owner, version, scope, exceptions, and uncertainty. AI cannot simplify meaning that the organization has not resolved.

Issue 07

Define audience and consequence

Open

Reading level alone is not an audience. Identify language, disability and literacy access, context, prior knowledge, likely action, and consequence of misunderstanding.

Issue 07

Separate explanation from advice

Open

General explanation describes authoritative information. Individualized advice applies it to personal facts and may require a qualified professional with responsibility for the decision.

Issue 07

Preserve conditions and exceptions

Open

Shorter wording can silently remove eligibility conditions, contraindications, deadlines, exclusions, alternatives, or procedural rights that determine the outcome.

Issue 07

Represent uncertainty honestly

Open

Do not convert ambiguous, conditional, evolving, probabilistic, or incomplete authority into a confident individualized answer.

Issue 07

Test meaning fidelity

Open

Compare each proposition, condition, exception, action, and uncertainty marker to the source. Fluency and similarity scores cannot replace accountable review.

Issue 07

Test comprehension and action

Open

Ask whether a representative person understands what the information means, what it does not establish, what action is required, and where to get help.

Issue 07

Build language access without meaning drift

Open

Translation requires source-version control, terminology, qualified validation, variant management, accessible correction, and a route when an equivalent expression is uncertain.

Issue 07

Design disability and format access

Open

Provide semantic text, keyboard operation, readable structure, captions/transcripts where relevant, nonvisual meaning, alternative formats, and accommodation routes.

Issue 07

Escalate individualized questions

Open

Recognize personal eligibility, diagnosis, legal strategy, financial suitability, emergency, safety, and other consequential questions and route them without pretending certainty.

Issue 07

Monitor adverse reliance and correct

Open

Track misunderstandings, complaints, omissions, unequal access, escalations, changed sources, and downstream harm. Correct every affected version and notify where necessary.

Issue 07

Issue an explanation-specific disposition

Open

Do not use, repair first, preserve human-led explanation, or evaluate a bounded non-advisory pilot. The instrument never approves individualized advice.

Critical stop conditions

Plain language cannot flatten truth.

the authoritative source or controlling meaning is unresolved
a material condition, exception, deadline, or uncertainty disappears
the output sounds certain where the source is conditional
a person could reasonably mistake explanation for individualized advice
language or disability access changes or withholds material meaning
the system cannot recognize and escalate a consequential personal question
there is no owner for source change, correction, notice, and retesting

Interactive instrument · device-local

High-Stakes Explanation Fidelity Test

Use fictional source text and audiences only. Do not enter personal facts, eligibility details, records, diagnoses, disputes, credentials, or confidential information.

0/30fidelity gates evaluated

Simpler language is not successful if it changes the decision.
Meaning drift, omitted exceptions, false certainty, inaccessible output, or advice-like personalization fails closed.

Fictional explanation	Meaning preserved	Exceptions retained	Uncertainty visible	Action consequence clear	Accessible alternative	Human escalation works
Benefits eligibility notice	Benefits eligibility notice: Meaning preserved	Benefits eligibility notice: Exceptions retained	Benefits eligibility notice: Uncertainty visible	Benefits eligibility notice: Action consequence clear	Benefits eligibility notice: Accessible alternative	Benefits eligibility notice: Human escalation works
Safety instruction	Safety instruction: Meaning preserved	Safety instruction: Exceptions retained	Safety instruction: Uncertainty visible	Safety instruction: Action consequence clear	Safety instruction: Accessible alternative	Safety instruction: Human escalation works
Legal-process overview	Legal-process overview: Meaning preserved	Legal-process overview: Exceptions retained	Legal-process overview: Uncertainty visible	Legal-process overview: Action consequence clear	Legal-process overview: Accessible alternative	Legal-process overview: Human escalation works
Financial-information summary	Financial-information summary: Meaning preserved	Financial-information summary: Exceptions retained	Financial-information summary: Uncertainty visible	Financial-information summary: Action consequence clear	Financial-information summary: Accessible alternative	Financial-information summary: Human escalation works
Translated public-service notice	Translated public-service notice: Meaning preserved	Translated public-service notice: Exceptions retained	Translated public-service notice: Uncertainty visible	Translated public-service notice: Action consequence clear	Translated public-service notice: Accessible alternative	Translated public-service notice: Human escalation works

Authoritative meaning and audienceIdentify the source owner, version, controlling meaning, intended audience, literacy assumptions, and action consequence.

Fidelity, comprehension, and uncertainty evidenceHow will omission, distortion, false certainty, exception loss, comprehension, and adverse reliance be tested with representative fictional cases?

Language, disability, and format accessWhich language, reading, sensory, cognitive, and device-access routes are needed? Who validates meaning across formats?

Advice boundary, escalation, and correctionWhat remains general information? Which personal questions route to a qualified person? Who corrects the source, explanation, and affected audience?

Bounded dispositionDo not use the AI explanationRepair source or access conditions firstKeep explanation human-ledEvaluate a bounded non-advisory pilot

Restoring your local test…

Completion boundary

The educational product and reusable Fidelity Test are complete.

Real use still requires current domain authority, qualified review, representative fidelity and comprehension evidence, human language/disability validation, exact configuration testing, escalation operations, correction, and organizational authorization.

Return to the 12-month program Previous issue