Published in MIT Sloan Management Review
Most advice about AI scams asks you to take it on faith. This does not. Think First, Verify Always was tested, published, and adopted around the world. Here is exactly what that means.
It measurably improved people’s defenses.
In a randomized controlled trial, participants were split into two groups. One group took a single Think First, Verify Always session, about three minutes long. The other did not. Both were then measured on how well they resisted realistic, AI-driven manipulation. The trained group performed 7.87 percentage points better than the control group (n=151).
That is the finding in one line: a very small investment of time produced a real, measurable gain in judgment under pressure. The protocol does not ask people to become experts or to distrust everyone. It asks them to slow down and verify, and that alone moved the numbers.
It was published in MIT Sloan Management Review.
The protocol was published in MIT Sloan Management Review in “A Three-Minute Protocol to Reduce AI Manipulation Risk” (2026). One of the most respected names in management thinking chose to publish it, and it reached exactly the audience it was built for: the leaders, researchers, and practitioners who set the norms other people follow.
It is referenced and recommended around the world.
Think First, Verify Always is referenced and recommended by companies and media around the world, spanning technology, security, and the press: outlets such as DevDiscourse, ZDNet Korea, and the Rome Press Association, and companies including Global Learning Systems, CybeReady, Cogent Info, NetCom Learning, Safe Harbour Security, and ByteRatio. These are organizations that looked at the protocol, judged it sound, and pointed their own audiences to it.
It is free for everyone.
The protocol is openly licensed under CC-BY 4.0. You can read it, use it, teach it, translate it, and adapt it, without cost or permission. The strongest protection is the kind that spreads, so we made this one impossible to gatekeep.
Read it yourself.
Do not take our word for it. Read it in MIT Sloan Management Review, in “A Three-Minute Protocol to Reduce AI Manipulation Risk.” The protocol, the trial, and the result are all there, in plain language.