This was something that bugged me while writing. Someone even asked, What's the point if people aren't going to read the whole thing? Reading this made my day, not just because of the content, but because someone else cared enough to tackle the same problem. Good one, Sire.
I love this problem and think it's super important. I've similarly noticed myself using a whiteboard to think critically for a while and then take a picture of the whiteboard as proof of deep thought, even if the next step is AI supplemented (a doc, a video, etc).
I've also started noticing people annotating a whole doc "written by humans" to try to convey effort and care. That's fine for some things but do that too often and a reader will be left with two thoughts:
1. Did they actually write this by hand? No way
2. Should they have written some of this with AI? Seems like a waste of time formatting some of this when they could've been spending their time thinking critically
i think the point is good, hadwriting forces you to think more, even from typing the same.. BUT , i am unsure this would be proof you wrote it or AI genereated it , same with tatoos , AI can genereate picutres of said Tatoo...
If I had handwritten this, there would be at least one (likely lots more) errors in writing crossed out mingled in with the text. That there isn't makes me wonder why such a lengthy sample contains seemingly zero handwriting errors. Is that plausible?
While I appreciate the work put into this, I found it pretty hard to read because of the authors handwriting. I would never do this myself because I know that I have awful handwriting, and people would struggle to read it
> The reality is people don't always care if a human poured their heart and soul into something. Sometimes they do, but not always.
Generally speaking the ones that do care are those that also hope their own creations are/will be appreciated by people that similarly pour their heart into them, and they really don't understand that most people just see things for what they as consumers get out of them.
On some level writing on the net now is for an AI audience anyway. (Greetings fellow bots).
> The reality is people don't always care if a human poured their heart and soul into something.
That's fine, but I don't think the author would suggest writing e.g. library documentation by hand. It's clearly advice for the creator side of the problem of low signal-to-noise ratio in the digital space and how to stand out/signal, rather than a general rule
LLM slop is considered low value because it contains a low information/minute as well as a low effort/minute signal. You want to know that the reader put more effort in than you do, and that it is worth your time. The effort signal just points to a possible high information/minute return.
When someone takes the laborious effort to provide a short paragraph on an insanely complex topic, precisely written without excessive hedging or jargon, and conveying a shortcut or mental model, I know they worked hard on it. That is still a valuable signal. No amount of fancy medium can top a well-framed idea concisely stated.
And also has the hallmarks of "art." I suggest, however, if one were to actually implement this, that the 'excrement' should likely be a food-safe lookalike; maybe chocolate with granola and fruit hunks. Less likely to have trouble with child welfare authorities.
That was a fun read! I caught myself almost skimming the first part until i got to the mirrored paragraph, and slowed down significantly after that to read more deliberately.
I'm not sure how much actual advice one can take from this essay though beyond "use personal commitment (e.g. time or presence) to signal importance/care" and "go offline" (aka touch grass)
i just learned that these exist so you can like, prove that humanitarian funds that were supposed to fund surgery in civil war-torn Africa were actually used to perform surgery
that seems pretty ripe for a new Geldof / Bono combo to use thinking they are doing good
Yeah and if this were taken seriously, you would have Mechanical Turk style services where poors are paid pennies to hand-write submitted/generated slop, defeating the purpose.
TLDR proof of care from the article: a low bandwidth process (e.g., from handwriting to tattooing it on your body) that you voluntarily put your words through to convey their level of personal importance.
Some of his examples were tongue in cheek. But even handwriting feels a little too laborious when what we lost that needs replacement is manual typing.
tangent rant, annoys me like "yeah senior engineer" or whatever, "yeah I can do that", puts the task into AI, puts up a dogshit PR can't explain how it works
There's never a single trick. Practically any trick to prove humanity can be tricked by AI.
There is no proof, only evidence. The best evidence is consistency of action and attitude. Those who've always cared, even before AI, will likely continue to care after AI, and those who did not care before AI will likely continue not to care. Also, if a person consistently expresses contempt for AI, that's a pretty good indicator they don't use AI. One could of course use AI to write anti-AI screeds repeatedly... but why?
This was something that bugged me while writing. Someone even asked, What's the point if people aren't going to read the whole thing? Reading this made my day, not just because of the content, but because someone else cared enough to tackle the same problem. Good one, Sire.
I'm glad it hit the spot. There is a piece by Christian Miles that got me thinking in this direction, which you might enjoy: https://ammil.industries/i-know-you-didnt-write-this/
this is easier to read: https://nonogra.ph/proof-of-care-in-the-age-of-ai-07-14-2026
I love this problem and think it's super important. I've similarly noticed myself using a whiteboard to think critically for a while and then take a picture of the whiteboard as proof of deep thought, even if the next step is AI supplemented (a doc, a video, etc).
I've also started noticing people annotating a whole doc "written by humans" to try to convey effort and care. That's fine for some things but do that too often and a reader will be left with two thoughts:
1. Did they actually write this by hand? No way 2. Should they have written some of this with AI? Seems like a waste of time formatting some of this when they could've been spending their time thinking critically
What do you mean "no way"? We've written long texts for as long as we've been writing as a species.
i think the point is good, hadwriting forces you to think more, even from typing the same.. BUT , i am unsure this would be proof you wrote it or AI genereated it , same with tatoos , AI can genereate picutres of said Tatoo...
Even though it doesn't prove the author wrote it himself, it at least proves he had to thoroughly read it before sharing.
archived, easier to read: https://nonogra.ph/proof-of-care-in-the-age-of-ai-07-14-2026
This misses the point.
If I had handwritten this, there would be at least one (likely lots more) errors in writing crossed out mingled in with the text. That there isn't makes me wonder why such a lengthy sample contains seemingly zero handwriting errors. Is that plausible?
While I appreciate the work put into this, I found it pretty hard to read because of the authors handwriting. I would never do this myself because I know that I have awful handwriting, and people would struggle to read it
Scroll to the end, text is intentionally copy-pasteable. Press ctrl+a and read it in Comic Sans :).
Don't handwrite your next post and definitely don't start writing in your own back to front cryptic code.
The reality is people don't always care if a human poured their heart and soul into something. Sometimes they do, but not always.
It's like lamented handwritten script when the printing press was invented....
> The reality is people don't always care if a human poured their heart and soul into something. Sometimes they do, but not always.
Generally speaking the ones that do care are those that also hope their own creations are/will be appreciated by people that similarly pour their heart into them, and they really don't understand that most people just see things for what they as consumers get out of them.
On some level writing on the net now is for an AI audience anyway. (Greetings fellow bots).
> The reality is people don't always care if a human poured their heart and soul into something.
That's fine, but I don't think the author would suggest writing e.g. library documentation by hand. It's clearly advice for the creator side of the problem of low signal-to-noise ratio in the digital space and how to stand out/signal, rather than a general rule
LLM slop is considered low value because it contains a low information/minute as well as a low effort/minute signal. You want to know that the reader put more effort in than you do, and that it is worth your time. The effort signal just points to a possible high information/minute return.
When someone takes the laborious effort to provide a short paragraph on an insanely complex topic, precisely written without excessive hedging or jargon, and conveying a shortcut or mental model, I know they worked hard on it. That is still a valuable signal. No amount of fancy medium can top a well-framed idea concisely stated.
> I know they worked hard on it. That is still a valuable sign
An infant scrawling the alphabet in its own excrement would have that "signal"...
And also has the hallmarks of "art." I suggest, however, if one were to actually implement this, that the 'excrement' should likely be a food-safe lookalike; maybe chocolate with granola and fruit hunks. Less likely to have trouble with child welfare authorities.
I am commenting only to say that I read the reflected-letter text and found that amusing.
That was a fun read! I caught myself almost skimming the first part until i got to the mirrored paragraph, and slowed down significantly after that to read more deliberately.
I'm not sure how much actual advice one can take from this essay though beyond "use personal commitment (e.g. time or presence) to signal importance/care" and "go offline" (aka touch grass)
I was genuinely expecting this to be LLM-generated.
Also, what’s his problem with the “Witch Priestess from the North?”
EDIT: Oh, the blue backgrounds are links. https://jacobfilipp.com/new-lord/
> I was genuinely expecting this to be LLM-generated.
It isn’t?
>Click here to see the "how this was made" feature
^ at the bottom of the article
We need to normalize provenance tracking and sharing, similar to how git lets you separate the author from the committer.
I would go further and quantify how much of the message is AI in situations where humans edit it.
We need a proof-of-care coin.
i just learned that these exist so you can like, prove that humanitarian funds that were supposed to fund surgery in civil war-torn Africa were actually used to perform surgery
that seems pretty ripe for a new Geldof / Bono combo to use thinking they are doing good
Am I the only one who thinks the ending is a non-sequitur? How is the hackneyed, "the kids are allright" [sic] related to the preceding content?
Yeah and if this were taken seriously, you would have Mechanical Turk style services where poors are paid pennies to hand-write submitted/generated slop, defeating the purpose.
TLDR proof of care from the article: a low bandwidth process (e.g., from handwriting to tattooing it on your body) that you voluntarily put your words through to convey their level of personal importance.
Some of his examples were tongue in cheek. But even handwriting feels a little too laborious when what we lost that needs replacement is manual typing.
Not to mention accessibility, which as usual benefits everyone with features such as text search, so I guess we‘ll keep looking for an answer.
Typewriters?
tangent rant, annoys me like "yeah senior engineer" or whatever, "yeah I can do that", puts the task into AI, puts up a dogshit PR can't explain how it works
now more than ever can fake it
There's never a single trick. Practically any trick to prove humanity can be tricked by AI.
There is no proof, only evidence. The best evidence is consistency of action and attitude. Those who've always cared, even before AI, will likely continue to care after AI, and those who did not care before AI will likely continue not to care. Also, if a person consistently expresses contempt for AI, that's a pretty good indicator they don't use AI. One could of course use AI to write anti-AI screeds repeatedly... but why?
The medium is the message! Well written.
I'm 100% sure an AI grifter will see this and start creating blogposts with AI-generated images of handwritten text.