How we use AI

We use AI tools heavily: to write analysis code, to draft text and to check our own work. You deserve to know which parts of a story a person wrote and which a model produced, so every story and every number on this site carries one of four labels.

How Harry checks AI work

• Numbers. Every number in a story traces back to a public dataset or a cited report. Harry reruns the code that produces it, and checks a sample of the results against the source by hand.
• Quotes and claims. Harry opens every quoted source and checks the words against the original. When a source can’t be found, we cut the quote.
• Methods. Each data story publishes its method, its data and the choices behind it, so you can check our work.
• Records. We keep the name of the model that drafted each piece, and earlier versions of anything we change after publishing.

Copy edits and editor’s notes

Some of our data stories start as AI drafts, written alongside the code that computes their numbers. After a story goes up, Harry can rewrite any of its sentences on the page. The story list then says how many passages Harry changed, next to the AI label: “Harry edited 3 passages,” for example. We keep the AI’s original wording and every earlier version of each edit.

The story’s code writes some sentences itself, from the numbers, such as the totals that change when you pick a different reading. Harry can’t rewrite those on the page. When one of them is wrong, we fix the code and publish the story again.

When a fix changes what a story tells you, or you need context the story lacks, Harry adds an “Editor’s note.” It is a dated box at the top or end of the story, or next to the passage it concerns. Corrections stay on the page as notes.

What AI doesn’t do here

AI doesn’t decide what we cover, and it doesn’t publish anything without Harry reading it first. When a model gets something wrong and we publish it, we correct it on the page and say so, as with any other error.

Harry will revise this page as our process changes. Questions about a specific piece go to harry@mckinleypark.today.