The first thing I ever had an AI write was about me.
This was day one, long before any of this was a company. I didn’t tell the machine who I was. I told it to write about me, so it would know me. Every version of “Ron” that has come out of an AI since traces back to that first AI-authored draft: the bios, the About page, the credentials on my first blog post.
The rule I brought back from the Army
I carry one rule from my time in uniform into everything I build now: no claim counts until it is checked against a primary source. It runs the whole company. It is written into my first blog post in plain sight. A scout does not report what he was briefed. He reports what he sees on the ground, and the plan changes to match.
Then the rule came for its own author.
”You don’t believe me either?”
Going through my first post one last time, Claude flagged the credentials block, the lines listing my service. The note, roughly: an AI drafted this, and AI paraphrase drifts. Check it against your record before you publish.
My gut reaction, word for word: you don’t believe me either?
That one stung. My service is the one thing I never expected to have to prove. But a rule that gets to skip the parts that sting is not a rule, it is a preference. So I did the thing. I pulled my DD-214, the discharge paper that is the primary source on a soldier’s career, and checked the post against it.
The record argued back by agreeing
Every claim held. And the paper came back stronger than the copy.
The post had my years and my wars right. The record said more: Staff Sergeant, four combat tours, two in Iraq and two in Afghanistan, a Combat Action Badge, an instructor’s badge from the Army’s NCO Academy. The AI-written version of me had undersold the real one.
Here is the part that matters. The flag did not doubt the soldier. It doubted the writer, and the writer was the machine. My own verification rule finally reached the one part of my story that an AI had authored, and it did exactly what it is built to do: it sent me back to the source.
Guard the paper too
A DD-214 carries your Social Security number, your birth date, and more. Before any AI sees a document like that, cover those lines. Better yet, use an assistant that runs on your own machine, so the paper never leaves your house. Checking the machine’s version of you should never cost you your identity.
Anchor yourself to the record
Full circle. The AI wrote me first. The paper got the last word.
More and more people are going to let AI write them: their bio, their resume, their “about me.” Most of those drafts will never get checked. They get pasted into the next tool, and the next, an echo of an echo, drifting a little further from the truth each time, until one day you are quietly proving your own life to your own software.
There is a better way, and it is the same rule. If you let the machine author you, anchor it to the record. Check the AI’s version of you against the primary source before you let it stand: your paper, your transcript, your own memory. Then it is yours, not the machine’s.
That is not a slogan I bought. It is one I earned, and one I teach. If you are a veteran turning your service into a resume, that is the work of the veterans workshop: your words, checked against your paper. Grounded in truth.
Ron Hampton
Founder, VetTech Homefront LLC
