"Think First, Verify Always": Training Humans to Face AI Risks
It addresses the risk of AI-driven cognitive manipulation for humans, offering a minimal intervention to enhance resilience, though it appears incremental in bridging cybersecurity and human factors.
This paper tackles the problem of AI-enabled attacks on human cognition by introducing the 'Think First, Verify Always' protocol, which repositioned humans as the first line of defense and resulted in a +7.87% improvement in cognitive security task performance in a randomized controlled trial.
Artificial intelligence enables unprecedented attacks on human cognition, yet cybersecurity remains predominantly device-centric. This paper introduces the "Think First, Verify Always" (TFVA) protocol, which repositions humans as 'Firewall Zero', the first line of defense against AI-enabled threats. The protocol is grounded in five operational principles: Awareness, Integrity, Judgment, Ethical Responsibility, and Transparency (AIJET). A randomized controlled trial (n=151) demonstrated that a minimal 3-minute intervention produced statistically significant improvements in cognitive security task performance, with participants showing an absolute +7.87% gains compared to controls. These results suggest that brief, principles-based training can rapidly enhance human resilience against AI-driven cognitive manipulation. We recommend that GenAI platforms embed "Think First, Verify Always" as a standard prompt, replacing passive warnings with actionable protocols to enhance trustworthy and ethical AI use. By bridging the gap between technical cybersecurity and human factors, the TFVA protocol establishes human-empowered security as a vital component of trustworthy AI systems.