Editorial policy
How we use AI in our writing
If you're spending time reading our blog, you should know what you're reading. Articles are written by humans, edited with AI assistance, and reviewed by humans before they go up.
What AI does
A rubber duck
A light pass on prose a human has already written from experience.
Grammar and flow. An author finishes a draft, then asks an AI to flag mistakes. If it's simple grammar and typos (we write this stuff in markdown), we'll accept fixes. If it's composition, we read the feedback and rewrite ourselves.
Sanity checks. "Am I being completely out of line here?" The author is the expert on the topic. AI may push back on a claim or how something is presented, and we reconsider it. This may include additional research or just simple rewording if a stance is ambiguous.
Diagrams. One thing we may let AI do is draw diagrams for us, but they're still carefully reviewed and approved.
What AI doesn't do
It doesn't write the article
Publishing AI slop is a good way to have publishing permissions revoked.
AI NEVER drafts articles. The article comes from the author's experience and opinions. If we don't have enough of either to write it ourselves, we don't publish it.
AI is not a source of truth. We don't ask it whether a claim is correct and trust the answer. Models hallucinate confidently on technical details, and will fold the moment you push back on most points it brings up: it's confidently a pushover.
AI is not responsible. A machine cannot be responsible, the author is. The human is responsible for accuracy and verification. Cross-checking with valid sources is a must.
Why
If we're asking for your time, we owe you something real
Generated content is everywhere. We're not adding to the pile.
We find it offensive to ask for your time when we couldn't be bothered to put our own in. An article is a personal experience to be shared, not a marketing fluff piece to be shoveled out the door as quickly as possible, and it should read like it.
This page covers the writing. How we use AI in the engineering work itself is its own policy.