Mapping Tool: Tagging Our Humanity in the Age of AI
(A Social Initiative)
When everything can be created instantly, we need new ways to see what was crafted with care.
🧭 Social Initiatives: Tagging Our Humanity in the Age of AI
🌱 Inspiration
Mark Zuckerberg recently described social media as entering a new era — one where AI-generated and AI-remixed content will flood our feeds. After the early days of sharing life with friends and family, and the rise of creators shaping communities, this next phase is about abundance — machines that can make almost anything, endlessly.
That’s extraordinary progress, but also a quiet turning point.
When everything can be made, what happens to the trace of us in what we make?
For me, the challenge isn’t AI itself. It’s the soft blurring of authorship — the fading ability to sense where the human spark ends and the algorithm begins. I don’t think we need to resist AI’s presence in creativity; we just need to be transparent about it.
🏷️ A Simple Way to Keep the Story Honest
What if we had a set of simple, universal tags — a creative provenance label that clarifies how something came to be?
Not to gatekeep, but to provide context — a reminder that every creation still carries a story.
| Icon | Tag | Description | Cue Phrase |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🧍 | Human-Crafted #HumanCrafted | Made entirely by a person. No AI involved. | “I made this myself.” |
| 🤝 | Human-Led with AI Help #HumanLedWithAIHelp | A person guided AI as a tool. Example: A creator records a podcast, then uses AI to edit, package, or promote it. | “I made this with help.” |
| 🎨 | Human-Sparked, AI-Made #HumanSparkedAIMade | A person imagined it, AI executed it. Example: Generating an image from a detailed text prompt. | “I imagined it, AI built it.” |
| 🧠 | Human-Inspired, AI-Expanded #HumanInspiredAIExpanded | A person lit the spark, AI ran with it. Example: Starting a poem and letting AI complete the next stanza. | “I lit the spark, AI ran with it.” |
| 🤖 | AI-Originated #AIOriginated | Created entirely by AI. | “AI made this.” |
These five levels map the full arc of modern creativity — from deeply personal to fully autonomous.
None are wrong. But naming where a piece sits on that arc keeps it grounded in truth.
And often, a creation doesn’t stay in one place.
It might begin as something entirely human and grow with a little help — or start with an AI spark and find its heart through human hands.
What matters is not the tier itself, but the truth of how it came to life in our care.
A drawing that takes three days and an image generated in three seconds both have worth — but different kinds of worth. Knowing which is which keeps our connection honest.
💬 Why It Matters
People connect not just with content, but with intent.
That quiet human touch — the thought, the persistence, the small imperfection — is what gives creative work its resonance. When that context disappears, our feeds risk becoming full yet hollow, abundant yet unanchored.
If platforms let us tag or filter by these categories, we could each choose what kind of space we want to inhabit: one built by human hands, by machine intelligence, or a mix of both.
🔁 The Next Step
If Zuckerberg’s “third era” of social media is about AI abundance, maybe the fourth should be about declared authorship — a time when we’re open about how our creations come to be.
Social media doesn’t have to lose its human center.
We just need to tag our humanity, so it’s not lost in the feed.
This could begin as a voluntary social initiative, but to be truly effective — to help people see and choose their connections — it will eventually need platform-level visibility and enforcement.
For creators who want to explore this idea further or use the tags in their own work, a Resource Page offers custom icons, colors, and tag descriptions — ready to adapt and share.
The New Provenance: Calibrating Humanity in a World of Systems
When everything is a system—from how we think to how AI creates—the single biggest blind spot is us.
Here we provide the mapping tools necessary to see the whole process. By defining clear boundaries for human intent, we empower creators and consumers to recalibrate their understanding of value, ensuring the essential human spark is always accounted for.
This initiative echoes many of the themes I explore in my podcast — about how we think, create, and stay human in a changing world. You can listen to related reflections in the “Small Steps Thru Life” series.