How to use AI to summarize long documents and reports

Long documents are one of the best jobs to hand to an AI assistant, and one of the easiest to get wrong. The difference is asking for a specific kind of summary and spot-checking it against the source.

Step by step

1. Say who the summary is for. A summary for your boss, for a customer, and for yourself are all different. Tell the assistant the reader and what decision they need to make.
2. Ask for a fixed shape. For example: five bullet points of the main findings, any numbers or dates mentioned, and open questions. A fixed shape is easier to check than free-flowing paragraphs.
3. Ask it to point to the source. Request the section or page each point comes from. If it can't point to one, treat that point as unverified.
4. Spot-check three claims. Pick three statements, especially numbers, and find them in the original. If one is wrong, check the whole summary more carefully.
5. Break very long documents into parts. Summarize one section at a time, then ask for a summary of the summaries. This usually beats pasting everything at once.

Common mistakes

• Trusting numbers in a summary without checking them against the source.
• Pasting confidential or personal documents into a tool you haven't checked.
• Asking for 'a summary' with no reader or purpose in mind.

Questions people ask

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