AI Influence Level

Most of what you read now has some non-human generation in it. I believe that every piece of work is a reflection of the author. If you publish a rambling and incoherent piece, stating "well it was generated by AI" is not a valid defense.

I also understand that the above opinion has not fully taken off, so posts on this site carry a number from 0 to 5 telling you how much of the writing was mine and how much was the machine's. The badge sits with the date and the tags, because it's the same kind of fact: metadata about how the thing came to be.

I use the scale Daniel Miessler proposed. Adopting his rather than inventing my own is intentional. We don't need 100 slightly different disclosure standards. A standard's value scales with its adoption rate.

The scale

• AIL 0

  Human created, no AI involved

  Written by hand. No model touched the draft.

• AIL 1

  Human created, minor AI assistance

  My words and my structure, with a model catching typos, grammar, and clumsy sentences.

• AIL 2

  Human created, major AI augmentation

  I wrote it, then worked with a model to expand, cut, or reshape it. The thinking is mine. Some of the prose isn't.

• AIL 3

  AI created, human full structure

  I supplied the argument, the order, and the examples. A model wrote the sentences against that outline.

• AIL 4

  AI created, human basic idea

  I gave a concept and constraints. The model did the rest, and I edited.

• AIL 5

  AI created, little human involvement

  Generated end to end, published with a look-over.

What the number does and doesn't mean

It isn't a quality grade, and it isn't an apology. A 4 can be more useful to you than a 0. Every post carries my name, so I stand behind all of it at every level. The number just tells you how it got made.