The Honest AI Scale

How I use AI, and what I promise you.

You deserve to know how something you read was made. I believe transparency is a form of respect, and respect is the foundation of every relationship worth having.

I use AI tools in my writing. I also use voice recorders, notebooks, conversations with my wife (a physicist who sharpens every argument I bring to her), debates with friends, and the occasional raw honesty of my 12-year-old son and my 8-year-old daughter. I want to emphasise that AI tools are software. While it’s easy to slip into laziness, I have developed checks and triggers to ensure none of them replaces my thinking.

Criticising a writer for using AI to help produce a piece is like criticising a surgeon for using instruments she didn't forge herself. The scalpel doesn't decide where to cut. The judgment is the surgeon's. What matters is whether someone cared enough to think it through, whether the ideas are genuinely held and rigorously examined, and whether the person behind the words would defend them over dinner with a smart stranger.

Every piece I publish now carries a small label: L0, L1, or L2. In this page, I explain what each means.

 
 

  • I researched, thought, and wrote this myself. The only AI tool involved is Grammarly for grammar and spell-checking. Every sentence, every argument, every comma is mine. (Even more so with Grammarly, they tend to recommend too many commas and semicolons!)

    Thinking: 100% mine | Production: 100% mine

  • I conducted the research, developed the arguments, and articulated my thinking in my own voice. Sometimes this means hours of reading, debating friends and colleagues, cross-referencing four different AI research tools, or filling notebooks with half-formed ideas before anything clicks. AI then helped structure or draft the piece. I edited thoroughly, verified every source and link, and removed anything I hadn't personally read or couldn't stand behind.

    Thinking: 100% mine | Production: Shared (AI helped with form, I controlled substance)

  • AI handled significant research and drafting. But the angle, the argument, and the position come from years of accumulated reading, professional work, debate, and discernment. I only write at this level on topics where I have earned confidence through long experience. I edited and verified the output, though less extensively than at L1. If my name is on it, my thinking is in it.

    Thinking: Mine from accumulated expertise and discernment | Production: Mostly AI, refined and verified by me

  • AI researched, formed the opinion, wrote the piece, and someone pressed publish. No human thought it through. No one cared enough to read it before you did. This is what I call slop. You will never find an L3 label on anything I write, because if nobody behind it gives a damn, nobody should publish it.

    Thinking: — | Production: —

 

THE PROMISE

Thinking and Care

Regardless of the level, I make you one promise: I never outsource the thinking. Every opinion is genuinely held. Every argument has been tested, debated, and discerned. Every source I cite, I have read. Every claim I make, I would defend to your face.

AI helps me produce work within the constraints of a full-time job and three children who deserve a present father. It does not and will not replace the care I put into what I share with you.

70%

MINIMUM HUMAN THINKING & CARE

30%

MAXIMUM AI ASSISTANCE

WHY THIS MATTERS

I don’s fully understand when people complain something was written with AI unless they refer to L3 above. In that case, I’m with you! What I mostrly care about is whether anyone thought. A handwritten piece full of regurgitated ideas is worse than an AI-assisted essay born from genuine inquiry. Form carries care, and care starts with thinking.

I built this scale because I believe the conversation about AI in creative work is stuck in the wrong place. It's stuck on three things: the tool instead of the person; the production instead of the thought; and on the surface instead of the substance.

You are smart enough to judge my work on its merits. This scale simply gives you the full picture, so your judgment is informed.

If you ever feel the thinking has slipped, tell me. That's the only feedback that truly matters to me.

"Form carries care. If nobody behind a piece of writing gives a damn, nobody should publish it."

— Dr. Alberto Chierici