How AI Systems Work – Practical Foundations for Modern Learners
Lesson 4: Planning Before Acting
Lesson Objectives
By the end of this lesson, students should be able to:
- Explain planning as choosing a sequence of actions toward a goal.
- Recognize why future steps affect current choices.
- Build a simple plan with checkpoints.
Lesson Content
Planning is more than picking the next action. It means choosing a sequence of actions because later results depend on earlier choices. If the first step collects the wrong information, every later step may be weaker.
A good plan includes a goal, current state, available actions, expected results, checkpoints, and a recovery option. AI systems can help create plans, but humans need to review whether the plan fits reality.
Planning becomes harder when the world changes. A plan for a quiet workday can collapse when a customer calls, a file is missing, or a tool behaves differently than expected. Strong plans include "if this happens, then do that" branches.
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