Hearing on AI Typo Suspicion
A sentence cleaner than usual becomes evidence requiring a private review before the document can be submitted as one's own work.
TRANSCRIPT: Hearing on AI Typo Suspicion PRESIDING: Internal Review, Self-Conducted DATE: February 21, 2023 STATUS: Unresolved
Opening Statement
The subject under examination is a single sentence in the third paragraph of a work document. The sentence reads cleanly. It transitions without friction between the preceding claim and the following evidence. It does not contain the phrase "to be sure" or any word the writer typically uses as a crutch. It contains no comma splices.
The writer does not remember writing it this way.
This is not a memory failure. The writer drafted the document. The writer also used a tool at some point during drafting for phrasing assistance. The sentence in question may be original, may have been produced by the tool and accepted as-is, or may be a hybrid. The distinction is no longer recoverable.
The hearing was convened to determine whether the sentence should be revised before submission, specifically to reintroduce one or two natural imperfections that would make it clearly attributable to human composition.
Testimony of the Writer
The sentence is better this way. The sentence communicates the intended meaning with fewer words than the writer would have used independently. The sentence does not introduce errors. Changing it in order to make it sound more like the writer's normal output would produce a worse document to preserve a more credible appearance of authorship.
The writer finds this uncomfortable.
The help is useful enough to use and awkward enough to disguise. The hearing cannot resolve whether the discomfort is proportionate to the circumstance or whether the circumstance is new enough that proportionate calibration is not yet available.
AI typo suspicion adds one private manual check. The check runs before submission: scan for sentences that do not sound like the writer, adjust two or three phrases, verify that the document is now plausibly attributable. This check becomes part of the workflow. Assisted work becomes routine. Disclosure stays exceptional.
The hearing concludes without recommendation. The sentence was submitted unchanged.