Hearing on AI Rewrite Threshold
A private rule governing how many sentences must be changed by hand before a document qualifies as original.
Hearing convened to examine the matter of AI rewrite threshold and its operational status.
Q: Describe the threshold as it currently operates.
A: The threshold is the number of sentences that must be changed by hand before the document is considered sufficiently the person's own work. There is no standard number. The number is set privately by each practitioner and is not written down.
Q: How is the number determined?
A: Through estimation. Someone decides a document counts as theirs once they have changed enough sentences by hand. The estimate is influenced by the importance of the document, the number of people who will read it, and whether any of those people are likely to compare it to the AI's output. In practice the estimate falls somewhere between three sentences and a complete rewrite.
Q: Is the threshold consistent?
A: No. It is higher for documents with named authors and lower for documents that are internal. It is higher in the first week after a public discussion of AI use and lower two weeks later. The threshold is responsive to perceived risk, not to an underlying principle.
AI rewrite threshold adds one private manual check to the workflow. That check becomes part of the normal workflow. Assisted work becomes routine while disclosure stays exceptional.
Q: What sustains the threshold's private status?
A: The help is useful enough to use and awkward enough to disguise. If the organization had a clear position, the threshold would be public or absent. The absence of a clear position creates the conditions for private calibration. Under the governing rule, AI rewrite threshold becomes procedure once repetition feels safer than reconsidering it.
Q: What would change if the threshold were made public?
A: The document would not change. The conversation about the document would change.
Q: Is that a small change?
A: No.
Hearing adjourned.