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- The AI rules you need to set before you need them
The AI rules you need to set before you need them
Just because it can doesn't mean you should let it
Zvi Band
April 21, 2026
I write weekly about the strategies, habits, and tactics around cultivating the connections that matter to you.
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AI can do a lot for your relationships right now. Draft messages, summarize past conversations, suggest who to reach out to. We'll get into all of that soon — there's real time to be saved.
But a lot of people haven't stopped to decide what AI is and isn't allowed to do on their behalf. That gap will eventually cost them something they can't get back.
Here are the rules worth setting now.
Rule 1: AI does not contact your inner circle without you in the message
Your closest contacts know how you write. They know your cadence, your humor, the way you follow up. When you send something AI wrote without actually being in it, you're not maintaining the relationship — you're running a simulation of one. And the tricky part is it can feel fine for a while. You haven't lost touch, technically. But you also haven't really talked.
AI can draft. You read it, make it sound like you, and then send it.
Rule 2: AI does not respond to emotional messages
Someone opens up to you. A health scare, a business falling apart, something they didn't have to share. The five minutes you spend sitting with that and figuring out what to say — that is the relationship. It's not overhead. Handing that off, even to something well-written, means you skipped the moment that actually mattered.
Not about optics. About what you're actually building.
Rule 3: AI does not make introductions on your behalf
An introduction is you putting your name on two people at once. AI can notice a potential match. But the message itself — the specific reason you think these two should meet — has to come from you.
A lazy intro is worse than no intro. It signals to both people that neither of them warranted three original sentences.
Rule 4: AI does not decide who deserves your attention
AI can surface people you've lost touch with, flag a relationship worth revisiting, even make an argument for why someone belongs in your A sphere right now. That's genuinely useful.
But the call is yours. Whether someone gets more of your time, which relationships you want to deepen, who you're actually curious about — that's not something to delegate. Once an algorithm is deciding who matters, you're not really building a network. You're maintaining a list.
The test
Before AI handles any outreach: am I present in this, or am I just signing off on it?
There's a lot AI can do. Just keep the actual relationship-building in your lane.
Until next week, Zvi
P.S. The people in your life who matter most deserve the worst first draft you've ever written.
Feedback is a gift! What did you think this week? |
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