# This Post Was Written by a Human

> Source: <https://ratio53.com/posts/this-post-was-written-by-a-human/>
> Published: 2026-08-24 21:50:08+00:00

I started noticing disclaimers on articles posted on HN saying something along
the lines of

This post was written by a human.

or

Written by a human, edited with AI.

or the converse

Drafted by AI, edited by a human.

A quick sweep for these disclaimers in HN-linked articles yields the chart
below. It is probably incomplete (scraping the web has become painfully
difficult) but that is not the point of this post. I still found it interesting
enough to keep:

At one point I thought about adding such a disclaimer to my own texts as well.
I thought it would make them feel more genuine. That it would show I had put in
time and effort, and that I care. I felt the need to prove that the text was
the result of my own thoughts, ideas, and creativity.

In the end, I never added such a disclaimer anywhere because the quality of a
post should matter more than how it came to be. And attentive readers will know
the difference between a text produced by someone who cared about the outcome
and one produced by someone who did not.

Knowing how a text came to be does not impact its quality, so why should it
matter?

For me, the perceived value of a text changes once I know whether it was
written by AI or by a human.

I do not want to read a book written by AI. Besides the fact that I do not
believe AI is at the level of writing whole, quality novels - not to say that
this will never happen - I have an appreciation for the work a human puts into
writing a book. Generating text from a prompt does not require the same kind of
skill.

However, I am fine with an AI-written README.md.

The difference is expectation. When I read a README, I want correct
information. I do not care who wrote it. But when I read an essay or a book, I
assume there is a person behind the words.

This topic feels similar to asking whether AI “art” can be considered art. What
makes art valuable? Is it the final object, or also the process that created
it? In that sense, adding a “human” disclaimer to a post might increase its
value for some readers by showing that a human put in the effort.