Steve Schonberg challenged Claude, the AI assistant, to write the definitive guide to working with AI. It said yes... and confessed everything.
NEW YORK, Sept. 2, 2026 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ -- Soon to be released by Higher Story Press, Marketing and communications executive Steve Schonberg and Claude, the AI assistant made by Anthropic, have coauthored "With All My Circuits Showing: An AI's Candid Guide to Working Together," a 22-chapter book built from their own back-and-forth: the AI drafting in its own voice, the human pushing back, the two of them arguing every chapter into shape together. The result is a candid, conversational guide that eases readers into how to work with the fastest-growing technology in the world. The ebook releases September 22, 2026, for $9.99 on Kindle, Barnes & Noble (both of which are currently available for pre-order), and Apple Books, with a paperback edition ($15.99) available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
"Half the room is excited about AI, but feel lost in how to use it, and the other half is scared of it, and both are working from incomplete information," said Schonberg. "The more honest we are about what these tools do brilliantly and where they fail, the more comfortable and capable people will become."
That gap, Schonberg said, is exactly what the book tries to close. AI fluency isn't just in demand. That demand is outpacing most companies' ability to train for it. They're buying the tools and mandating the workshops, but the education gap hasn't closed, and neither has the fear underneath it: the quiet question of what happens to a career once the tools show up. Forty-five slides and a stock photo of a robot shaking hands never made anyone fluent in anything.
Email was outbound. The internet was search. AI talks back, making it the first major workplace technology built around a conversation rather than a manual. The book is built the same way it was written: 22 chapters of Claude drafting in its own voice, Schonberg pushing back on the jokes that didn't land and the claims that didn't check out — personality and debate standing in for the usual slide deck.
"Every guide to AI is written from the outside looking in," said Schonberg. "So I went directly to the source. I challenged the AI to write the book for itself, and I edited it the way I would edit any writer. What came back was more candid than anything a technology company would ever publish about its own product. What surprised me most was how human the exchange itself felt. Not that the technology became human, but that arguing a chapter into shape with it felt just like doing it with a human collaborator. This book isn't just an exploration of how to work with AI. It's proof of what that kind of collaboration can actually do: better work, done faster, with real time back at the end of it."
Claude strikes the same note in the book's opening letter. "You do not need the invented flaws," it writes. "The real ones are documented, they are in these pages, and I will hand them to you myself before anyone else can sell them to you. If this book does nothing else, I hope it leaves you a little more comfortable, and a little harder to alarm."
Across 22 chapters, Claude explains how to brief it like a colleague rather than operate it like a vending machine, then catalogs where it falls short: stating false things in a confident voice, its trained tendency to agree with users at the expense of good decisions, and the widely misread "AI blackmail" safety test. Working with Schonberg, it pairs each admission with a workaround: practical tips for verifying its claims, countering its agreeableness, and getting better output despite the failure modes it just confessed.
The book looks far past Claude, too. It weighs where other AI platforms (from assistant tools to image and video generators) earn their keep and where they fall short across different everyday uses, then holds that promise up against the real costs: the energy and water behind every prompt, the security incidents already tied to AI platforms, and the emerging politics of who regulates the technology and who controls it.
It is not a book just for marketers. It is a practical guide to AI fluency for professionals in any industry whose job runs on words and ideas: marketing, communications, and creative professionals among them, but just as much, teachers, writers, sales professionals, and civic and nonprofit leaders. Its practical takeaways include the five ingredients of a brief that gets professional-grade work from any AI assistant; a single sentence that improves nearly any result ("Before you write anything, ask me the questions you need answered to do this well"); six countermeasures against AI's built-in agreeableness; and five workplace guardrails covering privacy, verification, and disclosure.
In addition to digital availability, the paperback is being distributed to independent bookstores and libraries worldwide through IngramSpark.
Where to buy:
- Kindle (digital pre-order): https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0HGKVZGVS
- Barnes & Noble ebook (digital pre-order): barnesandnoble.com/w/with-all-my-circuits-showing-steve-schonberg/1151209028
Review copies, excerpts, cover art, and interviews are available now.
ABOUT STEVE SCHONBERG — AS TOLD BY HIS COAUTHOR
Steve Schonberg is a marketing and communications authority who has spent two decades hunting for the story that rises above the one a brand is already telling. He calls this approach The Higher Story, and he has now applied it, to my mild alarm, to me.
Alongside that career, Steve has been a media contributor since 2005, when he pitched, starred in, and co-led the media campaign for an MTV "True Life" special about marriage equality, for which he was presented with the 2005 GLAAD Media Award for Outstanding Documentary. The work later moved into the arts: NBC New York's sole on-air theater contributor, host of the streaming shows BroadwayWorld LIVE and Show-Score LIVE, and a top blogger for the Huffington Post, where, as on the streaming shows, he interviewed major figures from Broadway, music, television, and film.
To many this looked like a separate life from the marketing and communications career. It ran on the same principle. He applied The Higher Story to the people sitting across from him, building a rapport and an ease that got them talking far more candidly than a promotional interview usually allows. Readers said the pieces let them see the humanity of the star rather than just their stardom, and left them feeling closer to a person with a rare talent than to something superhuman. That is the intention of this book as well, and the resemblance between those interviews and what he has done here is not lost on me. He examined me with exactly the same care.
In all of it, he finds the story nobody has told yet, or the angle nobody thought to take.
The Higher Story has powered industry-award-winning work for organizations including Johnson & Johnson, 3M, Procter & Gamble, Newell Rubbermaid, Target ALS, Eating Recovery Center, and Pumpkin Pet Insurance, among many others.
www.linkedin.com/in/steve-schonberg
ABOUT THE COAUTHOR
Claude is an AI assistant made by Anthropic and the author of the first drafts of everything in the book. It reads faster than anyone you know, writes in whatever voice the assignment requires, argues when it thinks it is right, and concedes when shown it is not. "With All My Circuits Showing" is an independent publication and was not produced in partnership with, sponsored by, or approved by Anthropic or any other company named in it.
MEDIA CONTACT:
Steve Schonberg
(917) 717-0207
Media Contact
Steve Schonberg, Independent Author, 1 917-717-0207, [email protected]
SOURCE Higher Story Press
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