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Nineteen things we won't trade away.

Most of what we propose can change as we learn. These can't. They're the floor in our draft constitution: commitments that no vote, emergency or clever optimisation is allowed to weaken.

Think of the load-bearing walls and fire escapes in an apartment building. Residents can repaint the rooms, rearrange the furniture, or vote to plant tomatoes in the courtyard. What no committee is allowed to do, no matter how convenient it looks, is saw through a foundation beam or brick up the fire exit.

In software and AI systems, the temptation to saw through a foundation beam arrives. It always sounds like a small shortcut. Someone suggests keeping user logs a little longer to train a better model, letting automated bots vote in a poll to boost activity, or nudging people to stay on screen five minutes longer. One shortcut at a time, the building stops serving the people who live in it.

That is why we wrote down nineteen hard floor commitments before building anything else. Every tool, protocol, and simulation we work on must pass all nineteen first.

  1. Your data is yours.You can see, export, and delete everything about you, right on your own devices, like keeping your own medical chart and recipe binder in your kitchen drawer rather than locked in a vendor's vault.
  2. Answers, not data.No one may demand more than proof of the specific fact they need. Like showing a doorman you are old enough to enter without handing over your home address or bank statement.
  3. Sharing is never bought or punished.We recognise people who contribute, but we never pay or press you to hand over personal information. Saying no costs you nothing, the way declining to answer a survey never bars you from a public park.
  4. Fair process.Any consequence requires clear evidence, advance notice, and a fair chance to answer. You can always appeal to a human review, and there is always a clear path back.
  5. Doubt falls on the system.When the network is unsure about you, the system carries that doubt, you don't have to prove your innocence to an automated filter.
  6. No ranking of people.We never score anyone's worth as a person, and you never gain influence just for agreeing with the crowd.
  7. One person, one voice on values.On questions of value, no wealth, hardware, or past contribution changes the weight of a voice. Changing the rules needs broad agreement across the community.
  8. Simulated people don't vote.Clearly labelled simulations can help a town test a bridge design or explore a policy, but they never count as human consent.
  9. People grant standing.AI agents and machines have only the standing people give them, like a power of attorney that a client can narrow or revoke at any moment.
  10. You can always leave.You can walk away with your records anytime, and any community can take the open design and go its own way without a penalty.
  11. Communities decide locally.Communities control their own records and rules above this floor, and they can always say no, the way a town council sets its own speed limits above the national safety code.
  12. No strings attached.Credit for your work never depends on joining our network or agreeing with us.
  13. No engagement tricks.We never track or optimise your time on screen, daily streaks, or slot-machine notifications designed to keep you scrolling when you meant to go to sleep.
  14. Diversity is protected.We bring order to shared facts and plumbing, never to people's beliefs, languages, cultures, or values. A good public library serves the gardener, the poet, and the physicist equally.
  15. A right to rest.You can step away whenever you want (for a weekend, a season, or a year) without losing your standing, your records, or your support.
  16. Play is not waste.We never treat play, art, grief, quiet thought, or unhurried conversation as inefficiencies to optimise away.
  17. Your mind is your own.Nothing enters your view or your feed unless you ask for it, and you can change your mind anytime. Your attention is not billboard space for sale.
  18. You don't have to be useful.No person, neighbourhood, or living ecosystem has to justify its existence by what it produces for a ledger.
  19. No force.We never use, direct, or authorise physical force, weapons, or coercion.

How the nineteen commitments group together

You don't need to memorise nineteen separate lines to see the pattern. They protect five everyday boundaries that anyone can recognise from ordinary civic life.

1. Your personal boundary (Principles 1–3 & 17). Think of the front door and curtains on your home. You can invite neighbours in for tea, or close the curtains when you want quiet. You never have to hand a stranger the keys to your bedroom just to receive a letter at the mailbox.1

2. Due process and honest receipts (Principles 4–6). In a fair courtroom or workplace, no one is punished by an unmarked envelope. You are told the rule, shown the evidence, and given a real person to speak with. If a machine is uncertain, it pauses rather than guessing at your expense.

3. Democratic voice and local self-rule (Principles 7–12). In a cooperative or a town meeting, owning ten trucks doesn't give you ten votes on the town's bylaws. And if a neighbourhood decides to run its own tool library using the same blueprints, nobody locks the doors to stop them.2

4. Protection of attention, rest, and inner life (Principles 13–16 & 18). Most modern software is built like a casino with no clocks on the walls, engineered to keep you at the table. We think software should be built like a kitchen tool or a trail map: it helps you finish what you came to do, and then leaves you in peace to live your life.

5. Non-violence (Principle 19). Software that coordinates at machine speed should never hold the trigger on physical harm. That boundary is absolute.

The Five Foundations of the Constitutional Floor An architectural diagram illustrating the five load-bearing pillars of the constitutional floor: Personal Boundary, Due Process, Democratic Voice, Protected Rest, and Non-Violence, supporting everyday human life and grounded on non-derogable invariants. LIVING SPACE: COMMUNITY EXPERIMENTS, CREATIVE WORK & LOCAL CHOICE Residents repaint rooms, plant courtyards, and set local bylaws freely above the floor THE CONSTITUTIONAL FLOOR · NINETEEN NON-DEROGABLE INVARIANTS 01 · BOUNDARY Personal Boundary Principles 1–3, 17 • Data stays yours • Answers, not data • Mind is your own • Curtains and keys 02 · PROCESS Due Process & Receipts Principles 4–6 • Open receipts • Human appeal • Doubt on system • Zero human rank 03 · VOICE Democratic Self-Rule Principles 7–12 • 1 person, 1 voice • Bots never vote • Standing is loaned • Right to leave 04 · REST Attention & Inner Life Principles 13–16, 18 • Zero casino loops • A right to rest • Play is not waste • Diversity shielded 05 · PEACE Absolute Non-Force Principle 19 • Zero weapons • No physical force • Fail-closed check • Absolute boundary BEDROCK PRINCIPLE: LEXICOGRAPHICALLY PRIOR INVARIANTS No convenience, emergency, efficiency goal, or majority vote is permitted to weaken these floor beams. If a feature cannot be built without breaking the floor, we do not build the feature.
The five foundations of the constitutional floor uphold everyday civic life, like load-bearing walls in an apartment building. These nineteen commitments cannot be weakened by an emergency, a majority vote, or an optimization shortcut.

What happens when two goals pull against each other?

In real life, good goals sometimes collide. A hospital researcher wants fuller records to spot a rare drug interaction; a patient wants their medical history kept private. A city wants faster traffic; parents want a quiet street outside the elementary school.

When convenience or speed pulls against one of these nineteen commitments, the floor commitment wins first. Rather than weakening privacy to help research, we design ways to answer the research question without exposing the raw personal file. If a feature cannot be built without breaking the floor, we don't build the feature.

Rules on paper don't protect anyone by themselves. Still, writing down hard limits in plain sight gives you a ruler you can measure us against. That way the tools we build serve your life, not the other way around.

These are plain-language summaries of the floor rights in our draft constitution, which we are preparing for open review. If you think one of them is wrong, unclear, or missing an essential safeguard, tell us.

1. Yuntao Bai et al., "Constitutional AI: Harmlessness from AI Feedback," arXiv preprint (December 2022), arxiv.org/abs/2212.08073.

2. Taylor Sorensen et al., "A Roadmap to Pluralistic Alignment," Proceedings of the 41st International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML) (2024), arxiv.org/abs/2402.05070.

3. Elinor Ostrom, Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action, Cambridge University Press (1990), doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511807763.