His Highness Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Crown Prince of Dubai, Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Defence, and Chairman of the Board of Trustees of Dubai Future Foundation, today approved the launch of a groundbreaking global classification system. This system is designed to define the distinct roles of humans and machines in the research, production, and publication of creative, scientific, academic, and intellectual content.
His Highness stated, “Distinguishing between human creativity and artificial intelligence has become a real challenge in light of today’s rapid technological advances. This calls for a new approach to recognise the growing role of intelligent machines. That’s why we launched the world’s first Human–Machine Collaboration Icons: a classification system that brings transparency to how research, publications, and content are created.”
He further added, “We invite researchers, writers, publishers, designers, and content creators around the world to adopt this new global classification system and use it responsibly and in ways that benefit people.” His Highness also directed all Dubai Government entities to begin adopting the system in their research and knowledge-based efforts.
Developed by the Dubai Future Foundation, the Human–Machine Collaboration (HMC) classification system aims to enhance transparency in research and content production. It provides a visual representation that allows readers, researchers, and decision-makers to understand the extent to which intelligent machines contributed to a given output across various fields, including research, design, and publishing – areas increasingly reliant on automation technologies.
The classification defines “intelligent machines” broadly, encompassing diverse digital technologies such as algorithms, automation tools, generative AI models, robotics, or any technological system involved in the research or content creation process.
The HMC system introduces five primary icons to indicate the level of collaboration between humans and intelligent machines:
- All Human: Content is fully produced by a human with no machine involvement.
- Human led: Human-produced content enhanced or checked by machine for accuracy, correction, or improvement.
- Machine assisted: Humans and machines worked together iteratively to produce the content.
- Machine led: Machine took the lead in producing the content, with humans verifying quality and accuracy.
- All Machine: Content was entirely generated by machine with no human input.
In addition to the five primary icons, the system includes nine functional icons to specify where in the process human–machine collaboration occurred. These cover ideation, literature review, data collection, data analysis, data interpretation, writing, translation, visuals, and design.
The icon system is designed to be flexible and adaptable across sectors, industries, and content formats, including image and video outputs. While it does not assign percentages or exact weights to machine contributions, it enables creators to transparently disclose involvement, acknowledging that evaluation often relies on personal judgment.
To explore how to use the HMC Icons and download the classification system, visit: www.dubaifuture.ae/hmc
