{"slug": "this-post-was-written-by-a-human", "title": "This Post Was Written by a Human", "summary": "A growing number of articles linked on Hacker News now carry disclaimers such as 'This post was written by a human' or 'Drafted by AI, edited by a human,' according to an informal survey by an unnamed author. The author argues that while such labels may signal effort and authenticity, the quality of a text should matter more than its origin, yet admits that knowing whether AI or a human wrote a piece changes its perceived value for them.", "body_md": "I started noticing disclaimers on articles posted on HN saying something along\nthe lines of\n\nThis post was written by a human.\n\nor\n\nWritten by a human, edited with AI.\n\nor the converse\n\nDrafted by AI, edited by a human.\n\nA quick sweep for these disclaimers in HN-linked articles yields the chart\nbelow. It is probably incomplete (scraping the web has become painfully\ndifficult) but that is not the point of this post. I still found it interesting\nenough to keep:\n\nAt one point I thought about adding such a disclaimer to my own texts as well.\nI thought it would make them feel more genuine. That it would show I had put in\ntime and effort, and that I care. I felt the need to prove that the text was\nthe result of my own thoughts, ideas, and creativity.\n\nIn the end, I never added such a disclaimer anywhere because the quality of a\npost should matter more than how it came to be. And attentive readers will know\nthe difference between a text produced by someone who cared about the outcome\nand one produced by someone who did not.\n\nKnowing how a text came to be does not impact its quality, so why should it\nmatter?\n\nFor me, the perceived value of a text changes once I know whether it was\nwritten by AI or by a human.\n\nI do not want to read a book written by AI. Besides the fact that I do not\nbelieve AI is at the level of writing whole, quality novels - not to say that\nthis will never happen - I have an appreciation for the work a human puts into\nwriting a book. Generating text from a prompt does not require the same kind of\nskill.\n\nHowever, I am fine with an AI-written README.md.\n\nThe difference is expectation. When I read a README, I want correct\ninformation. I do not care who wrote it. But when I read an essay or a book, I\nassume there is a person behind the words.\n\nThis topic feels similar to asking whether AI “art” can be considered art. What\nmakes art valuable? Is it the final object, or also the process that created\nit? In that sense, adding a “human” disclaimer to a post might increase its\nvalue for some readers by showing that a human put in the effort.", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/this-post-was-written-by-a-human", "canonical_source": "https://ratio53.com/posts/this-post-was-written-by-a-human/", "published_at": "2026-08-24 21:50:08+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-08-24 22:13:09.152755+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["generative-ai", "ai-ethics"], "entities": ["Hacker News"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/this-post-was-written-by-a-human", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/this-post-was-written-by-a-human.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/this-post-was-written-by-a-human.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/this-post-was-written-by-a-human.jsonld"}}