What makes AI-assisted work yours
When almost everything is AI assisted, what makes a work yours is that people made real choices in it.
Soon almost everything you see will be AI assisted. Gary Sheng, who started this wiki, puts it at 99.99% within 10 years, if not sooner. So we should stop asking whether AI was involved. That question will not separate anything.
The real question is this: when almost everything is AI assisted, what makes a work something you are proud of?
Our answer: people made real choices in it. They considered several options. They used their taste, judgment and experience. They did not settle for what the machine suggested.
Slop is the mean
Slop is AI output that falls to the average. When people accept what the machine suggests, the work moves toward the same middle. Everyone will recognize that middle, even when it looks polished.
Most people will not choose this on purpose. They will ship it without noticing, because accepting the default is the easy path.
Why will is the center
God made people in his image, and he gave them the power to choose. "Choose life," Moses told Israel. A choice is where a person puts their will into the world.
AI does not remove that gift. But a person can give it away, one default at a time. So the question for a Christian, and for anyone who cares about human dignity, is practical: how do you accept the help of AI and still exercise your free and anointed will?
Nothing is obvious. A real choice takes discernment, and discernment needs a way to see what is in front of you.
The moment of choice
A work is made of choice-making moments. You pick a brand direction. You pick a profile picture. You pick the opening sentence of an essay.
Each moment needs a good experience. If it is painful to say what you want, you will accept the default. That is true even when you have taste and you care.
The medium is the message
The models are amazing. The way we choose with them is not.
In a chat app, you learn that the only choices you can make are the ones that fit in a back-and-forth. At most you get a few options in a list. It is hard to see them side by side, and it is hard to see the reasons behind each one in detail. The chat shapes what you think you can make.
Better models will not fix this. Better choice-making experiences will.
What this wiki does
- It sets out the philosophy: what a real choice is, and why it matters.
- It collects the patterns: how to design a good experience for each kind of choice, with good and bad examples.
- It works toward a standard: what it means to say that a work is truly co-made by people and AI.
It is for people who make things with AI first, and for the people who design the tools they use.
The hard part
A recommendation is also a nudge. An AI that marks one option as best shapes the answer. You can feel in control while the AI steers. A good choice-making experience shows its options and its reasons honestly, so the choice stays yours.