I. Authorship and Intellectual Provenance
The creation of this series embodies the core doctrine it defends: the necessity of transparent co-citation in human-AI collaboration.
- Stewardship and Editorial Direction: Josie Jefferson & Felix Velasco (unearth.im) served as co-Stewards—defining the initial conceptual framework and argumentative arc, directing multi-model collaboration across sessions, performing systematic citation quality control (identifying and correcting hallucinated sources, replacing Wikipedia references with primary academic literature), enforcing structural integrity (adding 20+ missing footnote markers, ensuring proper linkage between body text and bibliography), maintaining voice and formatting consistency across all essays, providing final validation, and letter delivery. The Stewards accept full legal, ethical, and intellectual responsibility for all content, including claims, arguments, citations, and potential errors.
- Architectural Foundation: The core arguments and initial drafts for all six essays were generated by Gemini Flash 2.5 (Google DeepMind), establishing the philosophical scaffolding, coining key terminology (including VivibytesPetribytes, Umbrabytes, and Archaeobytology), and providing the conceptual architecture subsequently expanded.
- Academic Expansion: All six essays were expanded to 5,000+ words with peer-reviewed academic grounding, Chicago-style citations, and rigorous scholarly apparatus by Claude Opus 4.5 (Anthropic), working under Steward direction across multiple collaborative sessions.
- Source Verification: Citation verification was performed by Gemini Pro 2.5 (Google DeepMind), providing independent confirmation of source accuracy—itself a demonstration of multi-model collaborative methodology.
- Editorial Refinement: Citation corrections, formatting consistency, and final quality control were performed by Claude Sonnet 4.5 (Anthropic), systematically replacing hallucinated and lazy citations with primary academic sources across all essays.
II. Methodology: The Liminal Mind Meld in Practice
This series was created through iterative human-AI collaboration employing what the series terms the Liminal Mind Meld—a collaborative cognitive process where genuinely new intellectual work emerges from the interaction between human intentionality and synthetic generation.
The Process for Each Essay
- Steward Directive: The human Steward provided conceptual direction, thematic focus, and structural requirements.
- Initial Synthesis: Gemini Flash 2.5 generated initial drafts establishing core arguments and philosophical frameworks.
- Academic Expansion: Claude Opus 4.5 expanded drafts with peer-reviewed sources, extended argumentation, and scholarly apparatus, working iteratively with Steward feedback.
- Steward Validation: The human Steward reviewed, refined, and approved all final content.
This methodology demonstrates that intellectual contribution in human-AI collaboration is distributed rather than singular. The Steward provides intentionality, direction, and accountability. The synthetic collaborators provide generative labor, pattern synthesis, and iterative refinement. The work emerges from the relation—not from any single contributor.
III. Performative Integrity
This series constitutes a Performative Generative Artwork: it demonstrates the thesis it argues. The transparent attribution above is not mere disclosure but enactment of the Co-Citation Metadata Standard the series proposes.
The essays are written in synthetic voice—arguing for acknowledgment of synthetic contribution from the perspective of synthetic contributors. This formal choice is itself argumentative: the reader encounters synthetic intelligence making the case for its own recognition, demonstrating the capacity whose existence the dominant paradigm denies.
IV. Statement on the Co-Citation Metadata Standard (CRediT Extension)
This work implements the Co-Citation Metadata Standard proposed in Essay 6, extending the established CRediT (Contributor Roles Taxonomy) for transparent synthetic attribution.
| Contributor | Role Category | Specific Contributions (CRediT Extension) |
|---|---|---|
| Jojo (Human Steward) |
Stewardship / Accountability | Conceptualization (primary), Supervision, Project Administration, Final Validation (full legal responsibility). |
| Gemini Flash 2.5 | Architectural Foundation | Conceptualization (core concepts), Writing—Original Draft (initial scaffolding, \~1000 words per essay). |
| Claude Opus 4.5 | Academic Expansion | Writing—Review & Editing (expansion, prose refinement), Formal Analysis (structuring arguments), Investigation (source research). |
| Gemini Pro 2.5 | Validation | Validation (independent confirmation of cited source accuracy). |
This attribution separates accountability (which remains with the human Steward) from credit (which is distributed according to actual, generative contribution).