Version 1 of #5607

Just to confirm, and so you can hear it from me, yes I did use AI to help with my submission.

For posterity, here was my position during the discussion:

I think it's technically fair for Dennis to consider the submission ineligible because the bounty terms clearly say "Submissions must be handwritten. No AI-generated text or code; suspected AI use makes submissions ineligible."

On the other hand, I think this outcome is a shame because I don't think my use of AI changes any of the real work and thought that was put into it. If you zoom out, the motive of the bounty is to attract people to work on ideas and develop them, which is exactly what I did here, regardless of the tools used. As How Do Bounties Work? puts it, "Bounties let you invite criticism and reward high-quality contributions with real money."

And this is exactly what happened here. The idea had been posted on Veritula for about 10 months, and when I saw the bounty, I took it as a fun challenge to work on. So in that sense, the bounty incentive worked. And it seems to me that the reception of the idea has been good so far, which is why I find this outcome disappointing. On a symbolic level—and I acknowledge that this may be very different from how Dennis sees or intends the decision—his withdrawal of all his funds feels to me like this work is somehow not something he's willing to reward.

I did attempt to persuade Dennis to reinterpret the no-AI rule by discussing the underlying reasons for the rule. We agreed that handwriting can be a way to test the submitter's own understanding rather than relying on AI's understanding. While we agreed that this wasn't an issue for me, we disagreed about what should follow from that. My view was that the purpose of the rule should matter more than the literal wording, whereas Dennis seemed to think that the written terms should still govern.

Ultimately, we couldn't come to an agreement on whether my use of AI was appropriate in the context of this bounty. We also disagreed about whether I should have raised my use of AI proactively. In any case, I respect Dennis's decision since ultimately these were the terms of his bounty. We also agreed that in the future, discussions like this about the terms ought to be brought up at the beginning rather than after the fact.