Job · Rung 0 · Rung 1

Check whether this is AI without accusing anyone

Get an honest signal, understand what it cannot tell you, and protect the person on the other side.

For Educators, HR and everyday users. Works at Rung 0 · Intuition, Rung 1 · Screening.

The situation

Business

A classroom, a hiring team, a community, or one person with a hunch.

Use case

Something reads, looks or sounds machine-made, and you want to know.

Risk

Accusing a real person who did nothing. The harm lands on them, not on the tool.

Today's failure

Detectors give a single score with no error rate, and they misfire more often on non-native writers.

Silvector

A graded signal that states its rung, its confidence and its known error rates, and recommends a next step instead of a verdict.

Evidence

At rungs 0 and 1, only a signal. Never a finding about a person.

Judged on

Decisions made with an explained signal, and the false-accusation rate.

Steps

1. Name the question you can answer

   "Does this need a closer look?" is a rung 1 question a screen can help with. "Did this person cheat?" is not a question any detector answers. Write down which one you are asking.

2. Ask for the error rate, on people like yours

   A score without a false positive rate is a hunch with a number on it. Ask what share of human-written work from the same population it flags. If nobody can say, treat the score as rung 0.

3. Do the base-rate arithmetic

   If a screen flags 1% of human work and you check 10,000 essays, about 100 innocent people are flagged. Decide in advance what happens to them.

4. Talk before you conclude

   Ask the person about their process, drafts and sources. Keep the original file, unedited. A conversation is a better instrument than any rung 0 or 1 signal.

5. Escalate by adding evidence, not by turning up the score

   If the stakes are real, the path up the continuum is more independent evidence with provenance, not a more confident reading of the same score.

Guardrails

• Silvector does not ship a text, image, audio or video detector today. This page is a method, not a product.
• Never act against a person on a rung 0 or rung 1 signal alone.
• Detector bias against non-native English writers is documented. Weigh it before you read any score.

What works today

For agent traffic, the check endpoint answers the narrower question of whether a request carried a verified agent signature. For content, no Silvector detector ships yet.

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