A measurement discipline for human–AI exchange.

The Sampo Diagnostic Kit is a free, open toolkit of structured prompts for measuring the health of human–AI exchange. Each diagnostic is a precisely constructed prompt that any user can run on any AI system. The prompts measure specific, observable patterns — in the user's language, or in the system's output, or in the relationship between the two — and produce quantified assessments rather than opinions.

The kit operationalizes the Sampo framework, which argues that productive human–AI exchange requires the human to remain the directing intelligence. When that role erodes — when the user defers, anthropomorphizes, cedes authority — the exchange degrades in measurable ways. The diagnostics make that degradation visible so the user can decide what to do about it.

The kit is not a benchmark. It does not rank systems. It does not certify a conversation as good or bad. It produces a reading; the reader decides.

Christopher Horrocks is a technologist at the University of Pennsylvania, where he has spent his career at the intersection of institutions, information systems, and the human consequences of both. He came to this subject through the institutions that deploy these systems, not the industry that builds them.

The Virtual Intelligence series grows out of a conviction that the public conversation about AI suffers less from a shortage of information than from a shortage of useful concepts. “Artificial intelligence” is too broad. “Weak AI” and “Strong AI” bracket a space that most current systems actually occupy. “Virtual Intelligence” is an attempt to name that space precisely — and to follow the naming to its practical implications.

He writes here as an independent voice, with no financial relationship to any AI company and no institutional position to protect.

The opinions expressed here are the author's and do not reflect any official or unofficial institutional position of the University of Pennsylvania.

This kit is free. It will remain free. The discipline it measures cannot be bought or sold — it can only be built through sustained practice. Anyone may use, share, and adapt these prompts. If you build something with them, a link back to the Virtual Intelligence project is appreciated.