How to Use AI as a Lost Innovator

A practical, step-by-step method for doing credible intellectual work with AI — and earning a hearing for it — without an institutional credential. Written for "Lost Innovators" and useful to any author, it walks through eight steps: set a base model and add independent specialist models; draft; have separate models adversarially attack the work; verify every source against primary materials; integrate honestly while following disconfirming evidence; keep producible transcripts; disclose AI use via the AIast notation; and publish openly for a dated DOI. It documents the verification failure modes that matter most — real sources misrepresented, fabricated "example" citations, tasks blurring mid-conversation — and frames the discipline as a way to avoid fooling oneself as much as to earn a reader's trust. This guide is the practical companion to the AIast disclosure standard ("Earned Trust") and to "The Lost Innovators Hypothesis."