Draft post: Authenticity/AI policy [skip ci]

Author: maxkapur

_posts/2050-02-10-authenticity-ai-policy.md

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+---
+layout: post
+title: Authenticity and the Illusion Slopes AI policy
+---
+
+I attached my real name to this site. That means that above all, this site must
+represent me *authentically.*
+
+Authenticity is why I don’t use any generative AI tools in authoring or editing
+my posts. Heck, I barely even use spellcheck. As
+[Tracy Durnell writes](https://tracydurnell.com/2025/01/27/the-open-web-as-gift-economy-part-4/),
+
+> Human taste, even if it doesn’t match mine, is more interesting than
+> artificial taste—because it’s *real.* It comes from someone particular, not an
+> averaged amalgam.
+
+Authenticity also requires that I abandon any pretenses about what happens after
+I inject my thoughts into the world. I don’t use AI, but I don’t use any
+countermeasures against AI scrapers either, such as blocking OpenAI’s domains in
+`robots.txt`. If the scrapers don’t get the text from here, they’ll get it from
+GitHub, or from someone quoting me on another blog. Although I do not welcome
+plagiarism, it’s a risk I accept as the price of participating in an
+interconnected society. (If you want to reuse text from Illusion Slopes, see
+[`LICENSE.txt`](/LICENSE.txt) for the terms.)
+
+Finally, on the internet, it appears difficult to combine authenticity with
+marketing. So, I don’t use Illusion Slopes to try to sell anything, nor do I
+employ any marketing cookies or user fingerprinting tech to collect statistics
+about the people who visit the site. Back when I used Blogger, I used to get
+some “dumb” analytics about post views by IP geolocation, but now that I use a
+[static site]({% post_url 2022-06-25-migrating-to-jekyll %}),
+I don’t even know which posts are more or less popular. I like it that way; it
+ensures I am writing for myself.
+
+Putting this all together, I realized that the Illusion Slopes AI policy is
+really a non-policy. I’m neither for nor against AI; it’s just “there,” a
+technology that doesn’t have much to do with what this site is about.
+
+But my failure to reposition my site for the AI era has incidental benefits,
+too: The site loads quickly (I hope?) because it doesn’t have filler AI images
+or heavy JavaScript analytics. And I don’t have to worry about adopting an
+aggressive anti-scraping filter that accidentally
+[blocks legitimate users]({% post_url 2050-02-10-check-prove-human %}).