Your explanation raises a few other questions, however. The original rules didn't answer these: the published criteria stated "AI use permitted; disclosure required." It did not describe a secondary quality filter applied specifically to AI-disclosed submissions.
I disclosed honestly and completely, as required. If the actual filtering standard was "quality of AI assistance" rather than "presence of AI assistance," that standard wasn't visible to submitters before the deadline. Honest disclosers couldn't calibrate to a bar they couldn't see.
I'm not arguing my essay should have won.
I'm asking whether the published rules accurately described how submissions would actually be evaluated.
On the essay itself: I'd invite you to read it against your stated quality bar. The argument — that discovery, validation, and scaling require structurally separate functions with work-based rather than credential-based handoffs — directly answers the prompt you posed.
The voice is mine. The framework is mine. The specifics are mine. Claude helped with polish, which is what I disclosed.
If, after reading it, you still judge it below your quality threshold, I'd genuinely like to understand why. That feedback would be useful.
What I can't reconcile is weeks of email silence followed by a public response only after I posted publicly. Whatever the merits of the filtering decision, the process of communicating it — to someone with an active grant application on your platform — deserved better than that.
Austin,
Thank you for responding.
Your explanation raises a few other questions, however. The original rules didn't answer these: the published criteria stated "AI use permitted; disclosure required." It did not describe a secondary quality filter applied specifically to AI-disclosed submissions.
I disclosed honestly and completely, as required. If the actual filtering standard was "quality of AI assistance" rather than "presence of AI assistance," that standard wasn't visible to submitters before the deadline. Honest disclosers couldn't calibrate to a bar they couldn't see.
I'm not arguing my essay should have won.
I'm asking whether the published rules accurately described how submissions would actually be evaluated.
On the essay itself: I'd invite you to read it against your stated quality bar. The argument — that discovery, validation, and scaling require structurally separate functions with work-based rather than credential-based handoffs — directly answers the prompt you posed.
The voice is mine. The framework is mine. The specifics are mine. Claude helped with polish, which is what I disclosed.
If, after reading it, you still judge it below your quality threshold, I'd genuinely like to understand why. That feedback would be useful.
What I can't reconcile is weeks of email silence followed by a public response only after I posted publicly. Whatever the merits of the filtering decision, the process of communicating it — to someone with an active grant application on your platform — deserved better than that.
Tim Camerlinck