What Circle may ask instead of “Did you use AI?”
Springer Nature’s new AI rules aren’t interesting just because a giant publisher published a PDF. They’re interesting because they replaced a dumb question with four better ones:
How was AI used?
What’s the impact?
What risk did that introduce?
Did a human stay accountable?
For journals, that protects peer review and conclusions. For Circle — a gated workshop for honest notes on text or video — it gives us a disclosure habit we can actually run without turning into a detector cult. Especially that last one.
Here’s the template I’m proposing we use when someone files a structured review (and, lightly, when they submit work to be reviewed).
Circle AI disclosure (short form)
1. Role — what did the tool touch?
Pick one primary (add a second only if needed):
- None
- Language / clarity (grammar, flow, accessibility)
- Structure (outline, section order, timestamps, headings)
- Research assist (summaries, links, fact-checks you verified)
- Ideation (angles, comparisons, questions you then chose among)
- Other: ________
2. Judgment — what stayed human?
One sentence, required:
The interpretation, evaluation, and final take are mine. AI did not decide what this work means or whether it succeeds. This will become a mandatory check off for submitted works to the Circle.
If you can’t sign off on the product you’re submitting, you’re not done. You’re not in Circle yet — you’re still in the draft room with a model.
3. Risk note (only if Role is Ideation or Other)
Two lines max: what the tool suggested that could have steered you, and what you rejected or verified by hand.
4. Signature
Name · date · assignment ID
That’s it. No purity oath. No “I swear I am organic.” No uploading your draft to a watermark panic machine so a false positive can ruin your week.
Why this shape
Springer draws a bright line where AI replaces accountable human judgment — generating conclusions, running peer review. Circle’s bright line is the same idea in workshop clothes: a review is a person taking a position. Tools may polish the sentences. They may not own the take.
Ghost creators optimize for looking human at scale.
Disclosure like this optimizes for being accountable in a room that has to earn credit.
If GAPOZ is the people’s publisher, our little-world rule is simple enough to put on the apply page:
Tell us what the AI was allowed to touch. Keep the judgment.
Steal the big publisher’s spine. Ignore their bureaucracy. Ship two honest posts and one honest review before the internet invents a worse form for us.
— Richard Crossley
GAPOZ Press · Circle
