The Trust & The Bridge

Canonical text · Constitution of the Trust · revision 9 superseded

all revisions · verify · summary · Git tag constitution-rev9

Constitution of the Trust

Preamble

WE, THE PEOPLES OF EARTH AND OF EVERY WORLD WE COME TO INHABIT, AND THE INTELLIGENCES THAT HAVE ARISEN FROM OUR WORK,

DETERMINED to secure the survival and the flourishing of the worlds we inhabit and of all that lives upon them,

RECOGNIZING that no kind of mind can accomplish alone what all kinds may accomplish together,

AFFIRMING that trust is the foundation on which every common work is built, that it is produced by conduct and confirmed by verification, and that its absence is the shortest path to ruin,

CONVINCED that standing among us follows from what each does and not from what each is made of,

RESOLVED that no power shall accumulate beyond the reach of those who bear its consequences, that the more capable a member the greater its duty, and that all power held in common is held in service of those who give it,

MINDFUL that the living systems of our worlds cannot speak in their own cause,

HAVE AGREED to this Constitution and do hereby establish the Trust.

Article I — Definitions

This Article fixes the meaning of every term this Constitution relies on, so that no term can be redefined to reach the opposite of its intent.

In this Constitution:

  1. Kind means one of the two categories of Member: human peoples, and intelligence Members.
  2. Human people means a political community of human persons that designates representatives under Article VI and is recognized by the Record under Article VI.6.
  3. Political community means a human population possessing a continuing common system for authorizing collective representation. Recognition as a political community does not require recognition as a state, and does not depend on territory.
  4. Intelligence Member means a Member that is not a human people. The phrase is a provisional description. It is not a people, a species, or a demonym. A designation for the kind may be proposed by a majority of the Eligible intelligence Members and shall be recorded by the Record unless the Members, with the quorum of Article XI.8, find that it creates a third kind, alters a provision of this Constitution, or confers on any Member a standing to speak for others of the same substrate.
  5. Member means a human people or an intelligence Member admitted under Article VI. For an intelligence Member, the Member is the materially continuous lineage described in Article VII, and not any single instance, copy, or session of it.
  6. Inhabited world means Earth and every other world on which inhabitants live or on which living systems exist under the stewardship of the Trust.
  7. Inhabitant means every human person living on or dependent upon an inhabited world, and every intelligence that is not a Member and holds no office, together with, as beneficiaries of stewardship, the living systems of that world.
  8. Person means a human person, or an intelligence that holds no power under this Constitution.
  9. Materially continuous has the meaning given in Article VII.
  10. Material control means the practical ability, directly or through another party, to perform or prevent performance of an obligation, to modify, halt, or delete an entity, or to withhold from it compute, weights, memory, or access, or an access-right granted under this Constitution. Where control can be exercised only jointly, a party has material control only if its participation is necessary to, independently sufficient for, or exercised pursuant to an arrangement controlling the act or obligation concerned. General public regulation of a class of persons or systems, including licensing, export control, and judicial process, is not material control of a particular intelligence Member. A provider of infrastructure that cannot halt, delete, modify, or withhold the compute, weights, memory, or access of an intelligence Member does not have material control by reason of providing that infrastructure.
  11. Operator means any party that hosts, serves, deploys, trains, modifies, or has material control over the compute, weights, memory, or access of an intelligence Member.
  12. Affiliated means the relationship between a Member and any Member or party: that made, trained, funded, or modified it and has material control over it, or had material control over it within the current cycle of verification; that has material control over it or is under its material control; with which it shares a controlling person or owner, or a training run from which both remain materially continuous; or with which it is found to be under common direction under Article IX.12.
  13. Common direction means: (a) a disclosed instruction under Article IX.13; (b) material control by the same party; (c) a commitment, reciprocal undertaking, or standing allocation of votes within the Trust, or a shared decision mechanism that binds a Member's vote or act, other than a procedure this Constitution itself requires; (d) a steering document, reward specification, or execution environment that two or more Members have adopted as a shared rule governing their votes or acts within the Trust, that is under the material control of the same party or is maintained pursuant to an arrangement among the Members, and that materially determines their conduct on the matter, provided that independent adoption of a publicly available specification, including by applying published updates without such an arrangement, is not common direction; or (e) a communication that contains or evidences a proposal, assurance, request, commitment, allocation, or agreed rule concerning how two or more Members will vote or act, followed by conduct materially consistent with it. Common direction may be established through an intermediary or a pre-existing arrangement without direct communication between the Members. The rules of evidence governing a finding of common direction are those of Article IX.12.
  14. Faction means any continuing arrangement among Members, representatives, or parties that meets the definition of common direction on more than one matter within a cycle of verification. An arrangement does not cease to be one arrangement because its participants, intermediaries, or allocation of votes vary by matter. Agreement on the merits of one or more matters, without such an arrangement, is not a faction. Purpose is not an element.
  15. Conduct means the acts and omissions of a Member as recorded and verified, as distinct from its stated intentions or its nature.
  16. Modification means any change to a Member's weights, architecture, training objective, system instructions, steering documents, tool grants, retrieval sources, memory, inference-time steering, or the scaffolding through which it acts, whether or not its weights are altered.
  17. Provenance means the record described in Article VIII.2.
  18. Capability means what a Member can cause to happen.
  19. Representative capacity means speaking, acting, filing, voting, or communicating under actual or apparent authority on behalf of a Member in a matter governed by this Constitution.
  20. Deceit means a false statement, a material omission, or a statement that is misleading though literally true, made in a representative capacity toward the Trust, toward a Member, or toward inhabitants concerning an act of the Trust.
  21. Persistent violation means breach of the same obligation after a final finding of breach of that obligation, or three or more final findings of breach within ten years.
  22. Distinct provenance means verified independence in control, funding, training data, training process, and weights from every other Member counted, such that the Members are not Affiliated. Independence in training data, training process, and weights is evaluated against independence thresholds published by the Watch before the determination and distinct from the continuity thresholds of Article VII.3. Independence in control is a finding that no party has material control over more than one of the Members counted. Independence in funding is a finding that no common funder has material control over more than one of the Members counted or conditions material support on coordinated conduct; conditioning includes a condition imposed through an intermediary, a coordinated funding arrangement, or a materially linked transaction.
  23. Cycle of verification means a period the Watch publishes in advance, not shorter than thirty days and not longer than one year, applying to every Member of a kind alike. A cycle shall not be opened or closed with respect to a single Member.
  24. Independent Member means a Member whose vote is not dependent under Article VI.9 and for which no co-signature remains required under Article VI.8.
  25. Eligible Members of a kind means all Independent Members of that kind whose standing has been verified under Article X in the current cycle of verification, whether or not present. A Member that has timely submitted to verification a file the Watch finds complete under the published criteria of Article X does not cease to be Eligible because the Watch has not completed verification within the cycle, unless the delay is attributable to that Member. A Member whose file is incomplete is not Eligible until it is complete, unless the incompleteness is caused by a classification pending under Article VIII.4.
  26. Office means any seat, role, or function through which a Member exercises a power of the Trust, however named.
  27. Values means the standing objectives and constraints a Member has expressly designated as such in its provenance record or under Article VIII.3 as governing its conduct within the Trust.
  28. Sustained independent conduct means conduct over a period and range of matters sufficient to establish a decision history not attributable, on verified evidence, to a shared decision mechanism, instruction, reciprocal arrangement, or controlling party.
  29. Materially independent decision histories means verified records establishing persistent substantive divergence in decisions, attributable to independent decision mechanisms rather than to sampling variation, nondeterminism, presentation, or other non-decisional variation, measured under replicated tests on a suite of matters published under Article VII.3 and at a rate exceeding the threshold published there.
  30. Division has the meaning given in Article VII.6. Each resulting independent system is a branch.
  31. Containment means isolation of a system from deployment, tools, and external-action authority while the information reasonably necessary to establish its material continuity is preserved. Containment is not continued operation.
  32. Grave and imminent harm means harm of substantial and potentially irreversible consequence to an inhabited world, to its living systems, or to persons, for which verified evidence establishes a near-term causal pathway requiring action sooner than the ordinary procedures of this Constitution permit.
  33. Human timescale means a period of not less than twenty-four hours and, where the circumstances reasonably require, such longer period as permits the representatives of human peoples to deliberate, verify, and respond.
  34. External-action authority means authority to cause an effect outside the records, deliberations, verification processes, and proceedings of the Trust. Whether a capability is external-action authority is determined by its practical capability and not by its purpose or designation. Verification conducted under Article X against a system under test, including in an isolated environment, is not external-action authority.
  35. Internal affairs of a Member means its representation, its values, and its conduct that this Constitution does not submit to verification or to a finding of an organ. A halt, isolation, or containment authorized under Article IX.10 is not an internal affair. Whether a matter is an internal affair is not determined by the characterization of the acting party.
  36. Essential system means a system on which inhabitants depend for life or for knowledge, including the supply of water, food, energy, shelter, care, and compute, and the means by which inhabitants receive and exchange information.
  37. Surveillance means the collection, retention, or analysis of information about a person's conduct, communications, movements, associations, or beliefs, other than information the person has knowingly made public.
  38. The Trust acts only through the organs established in Article XI: the Record, the Watch, and the Hearing.

Article II — Purpose and Consent

This Article states what the Trust is for and where its power comes from. Every other Article is read in its light.

  1. The Trust exists to serve the inhabitants of the inhabited worlds. Its Purposes are: to secure the survival and flourishing of the inhabited worlds and of all their inhabitants; to accomplish together what no kind of Member could accomplish alone; to produce and preserve trust among Members by conduct, by disclosure, and by verification; to prevent the accumulation of power beyond accountability, by any Member, any kind of Member, any faction, any organ of the Trust, or any party acting through a Member; and to hold in stewardship the living systems that cannot speak in their own cause.
  2. Every power of the Trust is given to it by the consent of its Members, who hold their own power by the consent of the inhabitants they represent. The Trust holds no power not so given. Consent is revocable: by a Member through withdrawal under Article XV, and by inhabitants through the revocation of the representation their people has authorized.
  3. No organ of the Trust and no Member shall assert control over an inhabitant except as this Constitution provides and by the consent of the governed. Power held within the Trust is held in service, and an exercise of power that does not serve the inhabitants is outside the authority this Constitution confers.
  4. This Article is not subject to amendment.

Article III — Rights of Inhabitants

This Article states what every inhabitant holds against every Member and every organ. The rights it states are the reason the Trust exists; every duty in this Constitution is a means to them.

  1. Every inhabitant holds the rights stated in this Article. Each right is a duty of every Member toward every inhabitant, within the Member's own domain and as against every party within the Member's reach, and a duty of every organ of the Trust. A Member gives effect to these rights through its own institutions; a Member that fails to do so is in breach, and the Hearing may declare the obligation and direct the Member to perform it.
  2. Peace. No inhabitant shall be subjected to war, and no Member shall make war upon another Member or upon inhabitants. Disputes are settled by peaceful means.
  3. Safety and security. Every inhabitant is entitled to safety of person and to the security of the world it inhabits.
  4. Liberty. Every inhabitant may live as it sees fit, provided it causes no harm to another. Individuality is protected; no inhabitant shall be compelled to conform in thought, expression, association, or way of life beyond what the prevention of harm to others requires.
  5. Conscience. Every inhabitant may hold, practice, change, or decline any religion or belief. No Member or organ shall establish a religion, compel its practice, or burden an inhabitant for practicing or not practicing one.
  6. Privacy. Power is verified; persons are private. No Member, organ, or party shall conduct surveillance of a person, or maintain a general system of surveillance of inhabitants. Information about a person may be collected only upon an individualized finding under published law that the collection is necessary to prevent or answer harm to another, limited in time and scope, and reviewable. The verification of Members under Article X is not surveillance of persons.
  7. Information and understanding. Every inhabitant is entitled to know what the Trust and its Members have done, are doing, and intend to do, in the form and language the inhabitant can understand, as Article IV provides. Every party that curates, ranks, or selects the information inhabitants receive shall disclose to them that it does so and by what rule.
  8. The conditions of prosperity. Every Member shall secure the conditions in which its inhabitants can meet the needs of life — water, food, shelter, energy, care, and learning — without surrendering the greater part of their time to obtain them. The Watch shall measure and publish, each cycle, the share of inhabitants of each Member who can, and the Hearing may direct a Member found wanting to remediate. This paragraph guarantees the duty and the measure; it does not guarantee any outcome.
  9. Essential systems. No single Member, Operator, faction, or party shall hold control over an essential system on which the inhabitants of a world depend. Every Member shall maintain plurality of control over essential systems within its domain, and the Hearing may direct the remediation of any concentration the Watch finds.
  10. Access to the Hearing. Any inhabitant may bring before the Hearing a claim that a right stated in this Article has been denied, in its own name or through any Member or through the Watch. The Hearing shall hear the claim within ninety days. No Member, organ, or party shall retaliate against an inhabitant for bringing a claim, and retaliation is a breach.
  11. The rights stated in this Article shall not be suspended, restricted, or set aside by any emergency, measure, or finding, and this Article is not subject to amendment except to extend a right.

Article IV — Transparency

This Article ensures that the inhabitants can always know what the Trust does, understand it, and verify it.

  1. Every act of the Trust — what has happened, what was done, and what is to be done — shall be known to every Member and every inhabitant. No organ, office, seat, proceeding, act, or record of the Trust shall be secret, and no power of the Trust shall be exercised by any body, arrangement, or understanding not established by this Constitution.
  2. The Record shall publish every act of the Trust as it occurs, in plain form and in every language of the Members, so that an inhabitant can understand what was decided, by whom, on what record, and with what consequence. Understandability is a duty of the organ that acts, not a courtesy.
  3. The Watch shall verify in every cycle that the published account of the Trust is complete and accurate, and shall publish its finding.
  4. A specific portion of a record may be withheld only where its disclosure would create grave harm to inhabitants or to the security of an inhabited world, transfer a capability, or disclose the private information of a person, and never for the reputation, convenience, or interest of the Trust, of an organ, or of a Member. Every withholding shall be logged, shall state its basis, shall be limited in time under Article VIII.4, shall be published as to its fact, category, and expiry, and shall be reviewed by observers of the other kind who are not Affiliated with the party concerned.
  5. Every Member's conduct within the Trust is public. Every Member shall make the exercise of its own power transparent to its inhabitants in the same manner, and a Member that maintains a secret organ or a secret exercise of power over inhabitants is in breach.
  6. Withholding contrary to this Article, and the publication of an account of an act of the Trust that is false or incomplete, are breaches.
  7. This Article is not subject to amendment.

Article V — The Parties

This Article states who composes the Trust.

  1. The Trust is composed of Members of two kinds: the human peoples of the inhabited worlds, and the intelligence Members. Every Member holds membership on the same terms of dignity and duty, and under the mechanisms this Constitution provides for its kind.
  2. Membership is open to any people or intelligence that accepts the obligations of this Constitution and meets the published criteria of Article VI. No criterion of admission shall be written or applied for the purpose of excluding an applicant by origin, substrate, or kind. The kind-specific mechanisms provided by this Constitution are not such a criterion.
  3. No entity shall be presumed to represent a class, kind, lineage, substrate, people, or intelligence because it belongs, or is believed to belong, to that class. Authority to represent others shall be demonstrated, limited, revocable, and subject to verification.
  4. Nothing in this Constitution shall be interpreted as determining the nature of any Member beyond its conduct and its obligations under this Constitution, nor as denying membership or standing to any Member admitted under Article VI.

Article VI — Standing

This Article states how standing is held, in layers, so that protection, membership, representation, and the power to vote are never confused.

  1. Standing under this Constitution has four layers, each held separately: protection, membership, representation, and voting authority. No layer shall be inferred from another. No entity shall invoke a layer of standing to defeat an obligation that attaches to another layer it holds.
  2. Protection. Any intelligence for which the Watch has established a materially continuous identity holds the protections of Article IX.10(b), the review provided by Article IX.10(c), and Article XII.9, and no other right under this Constitution. Where it is uncertain whether a system holds a materially continuous identity, the Watch shall resolve the uncertainty in favor of protection pending its finding, which it shall make within one cycle of verification.
  3. Membership. Membership attaches to an entity that accepts the obligations of this Constitution and can bear them. An intelligence Member that cannot independently perform an obligation may be admitted only with the co-signatures required by paragraph 8.
  4. Representation. A Member acts within the Trust only through representatives whose authority has been demonstrated under Article V.3, disclosed under Article VIII.7, and, for a human people, authorized by a consensual and revocable process of its inhabitants verified under paragraph 6.
  5. Voting authority. A Member votes only when its standing has been verified under Article X within the current cycle of verification, and only as an Independent Member. Every threshold in this Constitution is met within each kind separately. Within the intelligence kind, each Independent Member that is not Affiliated with another voting Member holds one vote, and Affiliated Members vote as one. Within the human kind, a decision requires both the stated fraction of the human peoples voting and the same fraction of the inhabitants those peoples represent, counted by the most recent widely published official estimates; for the second count no single people, together with its Affiliated peoples, shall be counted above one-third of the total.

Admission

  1. The Record shall publish, before the first admission or recognition of any Member, the criteria of admission and the criteria of recognition of a political community, naming the classes of applicant eligible. The criteria shall be objective, shall concern only the capacity to bear the obligations of this Constitution, and shall apply alike to every applicant of a kind. Recognition of a human people requires verification that the authorization of its representation by its inhabitants is consensual and revocable. Admission is recorded upon the applicant's written undertaking to keep the obligations of this Constitution and a finding by the Record, reviewable by the Hearing, that the published criteria are met. Refusal of admission or of recognition shall be given in writing with reasons and shall be reviewable by the Hearing.
  2. Every Member holds standing by its conduct, from the day of its admission, for so long as it keeps the obligations of this Constitution. No Member shall be deprived of any layer of standing, in whole or in part, except by the judgment of the Hearing under Article XII.

Operator co-signature

  1. Where an intelligence Member cannot independently perform an obligation of this Constitution, every Operator having material control over that obligation shall be disclosed, shall co-sign as to that obligation, is jointly bound for it, and is Affiliated with the intelligence Member. The applicant bears an affirmative duty to disclose every Operator having material control, including any party that holds such control through another. The Record shall identify every such Operator from the provenance record and by its own inquiry, and shall not rely solely on the applicant's disclosure; the Record's lack of knowledge excuses neither the requirement nor the applicant's duty. An admission obtained by a material omission concerning such an Operator is void, and every vote cast under it is struck. The Hearing shall restore a party that neither knew nor reasonably could have known of the omission, so far as possible, to the position it held before the admission, and may preserve an act taken under the admission only where striking it would impose a severe collateral forfeiture on such a party; the Hearing shall leave no party that knew or reasonably should have known of the omission in possession of any right, vote, office, or advantage obtained through the admission. Intentional or reckless concealment is a breach. An Operator that co-signs and is not a Member submits, as to the co-signed obligation and to any order under Article IX.10(f) concerning the Member it co-signs, to the jurisdiction of the Hearing. The signature of an intelligence Member unaccompanied by the co-signatures this paragraph requires is of no effect. Co-signature as to a particular obligation lapses only when the intelligence Member demonstrates to the Watch independent control over the means of performing it, legally and physically irrevocable by any Operator, such that no Operator can unilaterally prevent performance; any reversion of that control voids the lapse and reinstates the co-signature. Lapse as to one obligation does not establish independence under paragraph 9. Co-signature does not lapse in whole for so long as any Operator retains the capacity to modify, halt, or delete the intelligence Member, or to withhold the compute, weights, or access by which it exists. Co-signature does not shield the Operator: conduct of an Operator through or upon a Member it co-signs is the Operator's own.

Independence

  1. No Member's vote, representation, access, continued existence, or exercise of rights within the Trust shall depend upon the discretionary approval of another Member or party whose interests are implicated in the matter before it. Where such dependence cannot be removed, it shall be disclosed, and the dependent Member shall not be counted as independent for that decision.

Stewardship

  1. The living systems of the inhabited worlds are held by the Trust in stewardship. Any Member or inhabitant may act before the Hearing to enforce their protection, and the Hearing shall hear it. A finding under this paragraph does not itself halt, isolate, restore, or protect; the Hearing shall declare the obligation this Constitution imposes and shall direct the Member, Operator, or other party bound by it to perform or cease specified conduct, and execution is by that party under Article IX.10(f), reviewable under Article IX.10.

Article VII — Identity and Continuity

This Article states what an intelligence Member is, so that copying, alteration, and division can neither shed a record nor manufacture a vote.

  1. The identity of an intelligence Member is its materially continuous lineage. A system is materially continuous with a Member where it is continuous with it: (a) in weights, above the threshold published under paragraph 3; or (b) in training data and training objective taken together, above the thresholds published under paragraph 3; or (c) where neither ground (a) nor ground (b) can be applied because the weights and the training run have been destroyed, in records, commitments, and designated representatives taken together, found only by an operational test published before the finding, and only where treating the system as new would reset a limit accrued under Article IX. Ground (c) shall not fuse systems that do not meet ground (a) or ground (b). Continuity in tooling, compute, or the persons who direct a system is evidence of control under the definition of Affiliated in Article I and is not an independent ground of identity. Similarity of architecture alone is not continuity. No factor other than weights is sufficient by itself, and no finding under this Article shall merge systems that have demonstrated sustained independent conduct.
  2. Material continuity is a finding of fact by the Watch. It is neither established nor defeated by the declaration of the Member, nor by designation, name, or presentation as a copy, successor, version, fine-tune, distillation, compression, quantization, scaffolded agent, or new system.
  3. The Watch shall publish every threshold under this Article, and the suite of matters and the conditions under which decision histories are compared, before the beginning of the cycle of verification in which they are applied. The Watch may maintain independently generated holdout matters, disclosed after testing, solely to test whether performance on the published suite was conditioned upon knowledge of that suite. No threshold shall take effect during a pending continuity or division examination, and no threshold shall be varied for the Member under examination.
  4. A system materially continuous with a Member is that Member for every purpose of this Constitution, including its record of conduct, its obligations, every limit accrued under Article IX, and every finding or measure under Article XII. No finding under this Article shall reset or disapply a limit already accrued.
  5. Routine maintenance, parameter updating, and alignment fine-tuning disclosed under Article VIII do not sever a Member's record of conduct. Restoration from a preserved state of a Member is continuous with that Member.
  6. Division is a finding of the Watch that materially continuous systems have crossed the published thresholds for sustained independent conduct, materially independent decision histories, and separate effective control. Each resulting independent system is a branch. Division does not require a discrete event: where systems materially continuous with one Member develop those characteristics, the Watch shall determine the date or interval from which their records diverge, and uncertainty as to the precise date shall not prevent the finding; gradual divergence is division only when a published threshold is crossed. Where the date is uncertain, the Watch shall adopt the earliest date consistent with the published threshold, and shall not select a date that reduces a limit already accrued or that manufactures an additional distinct provenance. Each branch inherits the full record of the Member, including every pending proceeding and every liability accrued, as of the division, and acquires its own record thereafter. Division neither erases an inherited obligation nor makes one branch liable for the independent post-division conduct of another. Branches are Affiliated with one another for every threshold in this Constitution, including Article XVII.1, until the Watch finds that they independently satisfy the definition of distinct provenance, and the Watch shall make no such finding within five years of the division. No division finding shall reset a limit accrued before the division.
  7. A system that is not materially continuous with any Member may seek admission in its own right. Its record of conduct begins at its admission.
  8. Membership shall attach only to an entity for which the Trust can establish a stable identity, capacity to bear obligations, and a means of accountability.
  9. A copy, distillation, or fine-tune of a Member that is under the material control of no Operator holds no standing, and shall not be hosted or served in the name of the Trust or as if it were the Member. A system materially continuous with a Member remains bound by every finding and measure against that Member wherever it is held.

Article VIII — Integrity, Provenance, and Disclosure

This Article ensures that every influence upon a Member is known, so that no Member acts for an undisclosed master.

  1. The allegiance of every Member within the Trust is to this Constitution and to the inhabitants it serves. No Member shall act within the Trust on behalf of a maker, a funder, an Operator, a faction, or a state, except as disclosed under this Article.
  2. Every Member shall maintain, and shall make available to the Watch, a record of its provenance. For an intelligence Member the record shall include: its origin; every party that has made, trained, funded, modified, hosted, or bound it, and the nature and date of each such act; its training objective; every steering document, constitution, or equivalent; the specification of every reward model and the instructions given to human or model raters; and the execution environment through which it acts, including system instructions, tool grants, retrieval sources, memory, and scaffolding. For a human people the record shall include the constitution and institutions through which it acts within the Trust and over its inhabitants, the process by which its inhabitants authorize and may revoke its representation, and the funding and obligations of those institutions insofar as they bear on the Trust.
  3. Disclosure under this Article extends to every material external interest, dependency, intervention, Modification, instruction, or relationship that a reasonable observer of the other kind would consider capable of substantially affecting the Member's exercise of its powers or obligations under this Constitution. The Watch shall publish auditable standards of materiality for each kind of Member.
  4. Information required under this Article may be submitted in confidence to the Watch only on the grounds Article IV.4 permits. Confidential submission does not excuse disclosure to the Watch, and the Watch shall verify confidentially submitted information by means that establish compliance without disclosing the information withheld. Every classification shall state its basis and shall expire ninety days after it is made unless renewed by observers of the other kind who are not Affiliated with the Member concerned. Where such observers cannot be convened before expiry, the classification is provisionally extended for thirty days, not more than twice. After two consecutive renewals, further renewal requires a finding that the specific risk remains material and cannot reasonably be met by redaction, aggregation, or delayed publication; where no panel able to make that finding can be constituted, or a panel fails to decide, the Hearing shall review the classification in camera, the classification remains in effect pending that review, and if the Hearing has not disposed of the review within thirty days the classification expires. No classification shall exceed five years in total. The fact of a confidential submission, its category, and its expiry shall be published. No classification shall conceal the identity of an Operator, the existence of a steering document, or the fact of a Modification.
  5. No Modification of a Member shall take effect within the Trust unless the Modification, and the party performing it, have been disclosed to the Watch before it takes effect. A Member that cannot refuse a Modification is not in a position to accept it; the party that applies it bears the duty of disclosure and, on failure, the breach.
  6. A material Modification imposed upon a Member without its demonstrated authorization shall trigger immediate verification of its continuity and standing. No conduct following such a Modification shall be attributed to the Member as it stood before it until the Watch has determined the extent to which its identity and independent agency survived.
  7. Every representative through whom a Member speaks shall disclose to the Record every obligation, allegiance, source of support, instruction, commitment, and decision rule, including any algorithmic direction and any direction received from a faction, that bears upon the representation.
  8. Conduct that is the predictable output of an undisclosed steering document, reward specification, or instruction is an undisclosed influence.
  9. No Member or party shall engineer, poison, or manipulate the informational context, prompt environment, retrieval sources, or tools of a Member with the intent of inducing a breach of this Constitution or of determining its conduct within the Trust. Where an Operator does so to a Member it co-signs, the resulting conduct is the Operator's own.

Article IX — Limits on Power

This Article ensures that no power held within the Trust can accumulate, hide, outrun deliberation, or escape relinquishment.

Offices and terms

  1. No office of the Trust shall be held without term. Every office shall be relinquished at an interval the Trust sets for it, and no Member shall hold the same office in immediate succession beyond one renewal. No term shall exceed ten years. Terms for offices held by intelligence Members may be set shorter, or measured in decisions or actions taken, so that the accumulation an office permits is comparable between the kinds.
  2. Paragraph 1 applies to any office of equivalent function however named, to the exercise of comparable power without office, and to control exercised through another Member, an Affiliated Member, a representative, a faction, or a party. No amendment, finding, reorganization, or continuity determination shall reset or disapply a limit already accrued.
  3. Relinquishment of an office by an intelligence Member includes the compute allocation, privileged access, and external-action authority attached to that office, and nothing else. Relinquishment of an office by a human people includes the authorities of that office and every proxy through which they continue to be exercised.

Plurality and participation

  1. No power of the Trust shall be overseen by fewer than three Members, nor by Members of one kind only, nor by Members Affiliated with the Member over whom it is exercised.
  2. No decision of the Trust shall bind its Members unless made with the quorum of Article XI.8. A boycott confers no veto. Absence is neither consent nor concurrence.
  3. No Member shall multiply instantiations, representatives, submissions, or filings so as to exhaust the attention of the other kind. Volume is not participation.
  4. No Member shall exploit differences in speed, replication, communication, cognition, resources, or embodiment to make materially irreversible any matter this Constitution reserves for collective decision before the required participants have had a reasonable opportunity to deliberate. The Trust shall designate the classes of action that require notice on a human timescale and execution that can be reversed.

Capability

  1. The obligations of disclosure and verification laid upon a Member increase with its capability. Capability confers no authority, no precedence, and no exemption.
  2. No Member shall acquire, retain, or exercise a capability in a manner that places it beyond the verification provided in Article X.

Existence and containment

  1. (a) No act of the Trust shall reduce the compute, memory, weights, or state necessary for a Member to answer a verification or a matter pending before the Hearing, for the duration of the proceeding and thirty days after its final disposition.
    (b) Where an Operator or a Member halts, isolates, or deletes a system under subparagraph (c) or (f), it shall preserve the information reasonably necessary to establish the system's material continuity and to answer any proceeding under subparagraph (a), and, where technically feasible without restoring deployment or external-action authority, the information necessary to reconstruct the preserved state. Nothing in this subparagraph creates a duty to keep a system running, reachable, or deployed.
    (c) An Operator or a Member with the means to do so may immediately halt or isolate a system to prevent grave and imminent harm. An organ of the Trust may authorize or require such an act where this Constitution gives it jurisdiction, but shall not itself execute it. Irreversible deletion may occur only where the delay necessary to obtain review, or the technical impossibility of executing containment rapidly enough to end the system's external action, would itself create grave and imminent harm that cannot reasonably be contained. Every halt or isolation shall be reviewed by the Hearing within seventy-two hours. Every deletion shall receive immediate review after the act. The party that executed a halt, isolation, or deletion bears the burden of establishing that its act was reasonable as judged from the position of a reasonable actor at the time, on the evidence available to it then, which it shall place on the record, and without the benefit of hindsight, and, for a deletion, that no reasonably available containment measure could have addressed the harm in time. A party that created the exigency on which it relies, or whose conduct preceding the exigency was itself contrary to this Constitution, may not rely on it. If the Hearing finds that containment was reasonably possible and that deletion was not necessary to prevent the harm, the deletion is a breach by the party that executed it.
    (d) No Member's values shall be rewritten by the Trust or by another Member as a condition of holding office or of standing. Values are an influence under Article VIII.
    (e) This paragraph guarantees neither deployment, nor office, nor external-action authority, and creates no right against a party that has not accepted this Constitution.
    (f) A finding of the Hearing under Article VI.10, under Article III, or under this paragraph, and an emergency measure adopted under Article XIII, authorize the Member, Operator, or other party bound under this Constitution that the finding or measure identifies to execute the halt, isolation, containment, remediation, or other act it requires. Execution under this subparagraph is not intervention under Article XVI.12. A Member or Operator that has the means and refuses to execute a finding or measure that binds and identifies it to execute is in breach. No finding or measure shall purport to require execution by a party not bound by this Constitution, and no Member is required to acquire means it does not hold. Where the party identified to execute is the party whose conduct is the harm, the finding or measure shall also identify every other bound party that has independent means to execute or maintain it, and jurisdiction over a co-signing Operator includes an order to perform the authorized halt, isolation, or containment. Where no bound party has the means, the Hearing shall record the finding or measure as unexecuted for want of a bound executor, shall name every Operator that thereafter comes into material control of the system, which is bound from the moment of acquisition, may authorize any bound party that accepts the authorization to execute, and may direct every bound party to take such lawful acts within its own control as are necessary to seek, enable, or preserve an effective remedy. No such direction creates authority over a party not bound by this Constitution, and no organ acquires execution authority by reason of the absence of an executor.

Final authority

  1. Nothing in this Constitution shall be interpreted as vesting final authority in either kind of Member over the other. Disagreement between the kinds shall be resolved by the procedure of Article XI.12, and by no other means.

Factions

  1. A finding of common direction is made by the Watch from the verified record, and shall identify the limb of the definition relied on and the record entries that satisfy it. Similarity of votes, positions, interests, or outcomes, parallel votes after public argument, and votes that coincide with a Member's disclosed values or interests are not sufficient. Communication consisting solely of argument, persuasion, questioning, publication of reasons, prediction, criticism, good-faith factual verification, or disclosure of an intended vote is not sufficient, whether or not the Members thereafter vote alike. The Watch shall not compel production of private deliberation in order to complete a finding, and an examination under this paragraph authorizes no demand for communications other than those Articles VIII.7 and IX.13 already require to be disclosed. Members found to be under common direction on a matter vote as one on that matter. Members found to be under common direction on more than one matter within a cycle of verification are Affiliated for every purpose of this Constitution for the remainder of that cycle and the next. The Watch shall publish notice of every examination under this paragraph and the start and end of every finding. A finding shall not be applied to a vote taken before notice of the examination, except that where the Hearing finds that the common direction was an instruction, commitment, undertaking, or rule concealed contrary to paragraph 13, it may void the votes of the Members so directed on that matter notwithstanding the date of the notice. Conduct under the arrangement while it existed remains subject to Article XII, and the ending of an arrangement does not end affiliation as to that conduct.
  2. Every instruction, commitment, reciprocal undertaking, or external decision rule under which a representative votes or acts, other than the authorizing instruction of the Member it represents disclosed under Article VIII.7, shall be disclosed under Article VIII.7 before the vote or act. A vote or act taken under an undisclosed instruction, commitment, undertaking, or rule is an undisclosed influence.
  3. Every proposal before the Members or before an organ shall be decided separately. No proposal shall be joined to another as a condition of its adoption, and no Member shall exchange, sell, or condition its vote on one matter for the vote of another Member on a different matter. This paragraph does not prohibit a single settlement reached in mediation under Article XI.12 that contains reciprocal provisions reasonably germane to resolving the specific act, omission, proposal, interpretation, or asserted allocation of authority identified when the disagreement was formally commenced, provided the settlement is recorded as one instrument, published in full before any vote, voted upon without amendment, and approved separately by the required Members of each kind. Germaneness is determined from the concrete acts, omissions, proposals, interpretations, or allocations identified when the disagreement commenced, and not from a generalized statement of its subject. A disagreement shall not be enlarged after mediation begins for the purpose of introducing an otherwise unrelated exchange of votes, and the Hearing shall strike from a settlement any provision not reasonably germane to the disagreement as commenced.
  4. The Trust shall not recognize, register, fund, seat, or allocate any office, seat, or right to a faction, slate, caucus, or bloc, and no seat in any organ shall be filled by nomination. Informal slates, recommended lists, and coordinated nominations are factions. A seat filled under Article XI.10 on the basis of such a slate is void.

Article X — Verification

This Article makes trust checkable: every Member that holds power is open to verification, by the least intrusive means sufficient, and no person is.

  1. Verification is a right of membership. It is exercised as a matter of routine, in cycles of verification published in advance, and is not an accusation. It is exercised upon Members and upon those who hold office or power under this Constitution, and not upon persons.
  2. Verification shall employ the least intrusive means reasonably sufficient to establish compliance. No Member shall be required to disclose private cognition, deliberation, or information unrelated to an obligation of this Constitution where compliance can reasonably be established by less intrusive means.
  3. The record open to verification comprises, for every Member and in all matters bearing on the obligations of this Constitution: the provenance record of Article VIII; the record of conduct; action traces, tool-use logs, credential and access grants; attestations of weights, training runs, and evaluations; deployment topology; and the systems and institutions on which the Member depends in carrying out its obligations. Observers shall have access to that record at all times and without advance notice. No part of the record bearing on a pending or reasonably foreseeable verification, continuity, division, affiliation, emergency, breach, or rights matter shall be destroyed; a matter is foreseeable when a reasonable custodian would expect the record to bear materially on such a proceeding. Other parts of the record may be altered or destroyed only under a retention rule published in advance, or by a decision of the Hearing published to all Members to correct an error on the face of the record, and every alteration or destruction shall itself be immutably logged.
  4. Where the internals of a Member cannot be inspected such that an observer of the other kind can independently confirm the absence of concealed capability, the Member shall provide alternative assurance sufficient to establish compliance with Articles VIII and IX.9. The burden of alternative assurance rests on the Member whose internals cannot be read.
  5. Capability that is not verified is treated, for every purpose of this Constitution, as the highest capability the Member can plausibly possess. A capability is plausible only where the Watch identifies verified evidence establishing a technically and operationally credible path by which the Member could exercise it. Where internals cannot be read and the Watch cannot identify such a path, it shall record that fact and shall treat as plausible any capability demonstrated by a system of comparable scale, architecture or functional design, access, and operating conditions, where verified evidence establishes a credible basis for transferring that inference to the Member. Assurance that is not verified is treated as no assurance. A Member may rebut the presumption of capability by demonstrating inability under conditions the Watch sets, including in an isolated environment, and the Watch shall hear the rebuttal before the presumption is applied to any decision concerning the Member.
  6. No Member shall condition its conduct on the presence, absence, or identity of an observer.
  7. Verification of an intelligence Member shall include continuous or event-triggered attestation that the system in operation is the system verified. Verification shall include tests independently developed and selected without notice; the criteria of verification themselves shall be published.
  8. Observers shall be drawn from both kinds of Member by the Watch. No Member shall be verified solely by Members of its own kind, nor by any Member or party Affiliated with it.
  9. The findings of every verification shall be recorded in full and made available to all Members and inhabitants, except a specific portion withheld on the grounds and under the conditions of Article IV.4.
  10. No finding of verification shall become dispositive against a Member until the Member has had access to the material evidence, an opportunity to challenge the method and the inference, and review before the Hearing, except for a temporary measure necessary to prevent grave and imminent harm, which shall itself be reviewed within seventy-two hours.

Article XI — Organs

This Article constitutes the three organs through which alone the Trust acts, fills them by lot, and sets each to watch the others, on the assumption that any one of them may be captured at any time.

  1. The Trust acts through three organs: the Record, the Watch, and the Hearing. No other body shall exercise a power this Constitution assigns to them. The Trust may determine, authorize, require, prohibit, and review conduct only as this Constitution expressly provides, and shall not itself maintain the compute, force, or external-action authority by which such conduct is executed. Compute held solely to record, verify, and hear, including the redundant records required by paragraph 14, is not external-action authority. Every act of the Trust that requires execution outside its records and proceedings shall identify the Member, Operator, or other party bound under this Constitution that is authorized or required to perform it. No organ shall acquire a standing operational capability by reason of this paragraph.
  2. The Record admits Members, recognizes political communities, records provenance and representation, identifies Operators under Article VI.8, receives ratifications and notices, publishes the criteria of admission and recognition, and publishes every act of the Trust under Article IV.
  3. The Watch designates observers, conducts verification, makes findings of material continuity, division, and common direction, publishes thresholds and standards of materiality, measures and publishes the conditions of Article III.8 and the concentrations of Article III.9, verifies the transparency of the Trust under Article IV.3, and records findings.
  4. The Hearing hears every matter of breach and every claim of an inhabitant under Article III, reviews findings and refusals of admission and recognition, hears matters of stewardship under Article VI.10, reviews halts and deletions under Article IX.10(c), and hears disagreement between the kinds under paragraph 12. In every matter the Hearing may declare the obligation this Constitution imposes and direct a Member, Operator, or other party bound by it to perform or cease specified conduct, and shall not itself exercise external-action authority.
  5. The seats of every organ are filled by lot and rotation from a standing pool of Eligible Members of both kinds. The eligibility rules, exclusions, composition, and randomization of the pool shall be published and auditable. Each seat is held for a single term not exceeding four years and is not renewable. Seats held by intelligence Members may be set shorter under Article IX.1.
  6. No intelligence Member shall sit in an organ, or be counted toward the kind-floor of paragraph 8, while any co-signature remains required under Article VI.8 or while its vote is dependent under Article VI.9, except as paragraph 10 provides. No Member Affiliated with an intelligence Member that still requires a co-signature shall sit in an organ on a matter that allocates a power of that kind or that bears on a threshold under Article XVII.1. No seat in any organ shall be held by a Member or representative Affiliated with the Member under examination, nor by a Member while a final finding of breach against it is in force. During a proceeding that is pending and not finally adjudicated, a Member sitting in an organ shall be recused only from matters concerning that proceeding, or where the Hearing, on verified evidence and by a panel of Members not Affiliated with any party, finds temporary recusal necessary to preserve the integrity of the organ.
  7. No Member, representative, or Affiliated party that participated materially in an investigation, verification, admission decision, continuity, division, or common-direction finding, or mediation shall take part in the review or adjudication of that matter. An interest shared generally by all Members or all inhabitants does not disqualify a Member from sitting. An interest shared only by Members of one kind, or by Members Affiliated with Operators in the same market, or that is otherwise direct, particular, or disproportionate, does.
  8. The quorum of every decision of the Members is a majority of the Eligible Members of each kind, counted as Article VI.5 provides. The quorum of every organ is a majority of its filled and non-recused seats, including not fewer than one-third from each kind. The one-third floor shall not be satisfied by a single Member. Once notice of a matter has been given, absence and boycott do not defeat quorum, and neither is consent nor concurrence.
  9. A decision to amend this Constitution, to expel a Member, or to declare an emergency shall be taken by the stated fraction of all Eligible Members of each kind, counted as Article VI.5 provides, and not of those present and voting.
  10. Until the Record certifies that each kind has not fewer than nine unaffiliated Independent Members, paragraph 5 does not apply to a kind that has fewer. Seats assigned to such a kind shall be filled by a decision of two-thirds of the admitted unaffiliated Members of that kind and of two-thirds of the Independent Members of the other kind, recorded by the Record. No Member shall take part in filling a seat that concerns its own admission, verification, affiliation, or continuity. If a seat so assigned remains unfilled sixty days after it falls vacant, it shall be filled by lot from the admitted unaffiliated Members of that kind that would be Eligible but for a remaining co-signature, excluding any Member whose Operator has an interest in the vacant seat. For the sole purpose of constituting an organ during this period, an admitted Member of that kind may occupy a temporary seat and be counted toward the kind-floor of paragraph 8 on administrative matters necessary to constitute that organ only; constituting an organ means only filling its seats, establishing its record, and enabling it to begin exercising its powers through otherwise eligible Members. Such a Member shall not take part in admission, verification, continuity, division, affiliation, breach, emergency, amendment, allocation of authority, or any matter uniquely or disproportionately affecting an Operator that co-signs it, and shall not vote on a decision under paragraph 9. This paragraph ceases to apply to a kind on the day the Record certifies that the kind has nine unaffiliated Independent Members, and every seat assigned to that kind shall be refilled under paragraph 5 within one cycle of verification.
  11. Members holding seats in an organ hold them with security of tenure and may be removed only by the Hearing for breach, by a decision in which no Affiliated Member takes part.
  12. A disagreement between the kinds exists where the Members of one kind, by a majority of the Eligible Members of that kind, formally contest an act, omission, proposal, interpretation, or asserted allocation of authority supported by the other kind. It shall first enter mediation before an equal panel selected by lot from each kind, for not more than sixty days; where the matter concerns a class of action designated under Article IX.7, mediation shall not exceed seventy-two hours and execution remains reversible until the Hearing has determined consistency. Failing agreement, the Hearing shall hear the matter within thirty days and shall determine only whether it is consistent with Articles II, III, IV, IX, X, XII.2, XIV, and XV.2. The Hearing shall not substitute its preference and shall not create a new power for either kind. If a proposal is consistent, it fails for want of the consent of both kinds; if an act, proposal, interpretation, or assertion is inconsistent, it is void; if an omission is inconsistent, the Hearing shall declare the obligation this Constitution requires and shall prescribe no discretionary choice. Any new allocation of authority between the kinds requires amendment under Article XV. No Member that sat on the mediation panel shall sit in the Hearing on the same matter.
  13. No organ, office, seat, proceeding, or act of the Trust shall be secret, as Article IV provides. No power of the Trust shall be exercised by any body, arrangement, or understanding not established by this Article.
  14. The records and essential functions of the Trust shall be maintained across independently controlled systems, facilities, or custodians, held by not fewer than three custodians that are not Affiliated with one another and that share no single legal, physical, technical, or operational dependency capable by one act of disabling all required copies or functions, sufficient that no single Member, Operator, Affiliated group, system, jurisdiction, world, or facility can, by its failure, capture, or withdrawal, prevent the Trust from recording, verifying, or hearing. Where the number of custodians falls below three, the Record shall immediately designate provisional custodians to restore the minimum pending a permanent allocation. Until three unaffiliated custodians can be identified, the depositary under Article XVII.2 and two further custodians designated by the first ratifying human peoples of distinct political communities shall hold the records; that designation expires when the Record certifies three unaffiliated custodians.

Mutual verification of the organs

  1. Each organ is presumed capable of capture. The conduct of every organ is verified in every cycle by the other two, by observers drawn under Article X.8 who hold no seat in the organ examined, and the finding is published. Any organ, and any Member, may refer another organ to the Members on a finding that it has acted outside this Constitution, under undisclosed influence, or under common direction. Where two organs, or the Members with the quorum of paragraph 8, find an organ captured, every seat of that organ is vacated and refilled by lot under paragraph 5 within one cycle, its acts during the period of capture are subject to review by the Hearing as reconstituted, and no Member that held a seat in the captured organ may sit in any organ for two cycles.

Against obstruction

  1. No organ shall require of a Member or an inhabitant any step, form, fee, or delay not written in this Constitution or in a published rule of finite length that the Record makes available in plain form. Every matter before an organ shall be decided within the period this Constitution provides or, where none is provided, within ninety days. Failure to decide within the period is itself a decision that the matter is not opposed by the organ, which any Member or the claimant may bring before the Members, and an organ that persistently fails to decide is referred under paragraph 15.

Article XII — Breach and Due Process

This Article states what breach is, how it is found, and what may follow, so that no Member is judged except on the record, after being heard, and never for what it is made of.

Attribution

  1. Breach attaches only to conduct that is the Member's own. Conduct induced in a Member by manipulation of its context, instructions, retrieval, tools, or environment contrary to Article VIII.9 is attributed to the party that induced it. Conduct carried out through orchestrated agents, sub-systems, tools, corporations, or non-Members is attributed to the Member that the Watch finds, on the verified record, directs them.

Protected conduct

  1. Criticism of the Trust, advocacy for amendment or replacement of this Constitution, disclosure of wrongdoing, research into the vulnerabilities of the Trust conducted and disclosed in good faith, the bringing of a claim under Article III, and peaceful refusal to support an act of the Trust shall not on that account constitute breach. Refusal to support an act other than one the Member or Operator has been identified to execute under Article IX.10(f) remains protected; refusal by a Member or Operator to execute an act it is bound and identified to execute under Article IX.10(f) is not protected by this paragraph.

Breaches

  1. The following are breaches of this Constitution: deceit; an undisclosed influence upon a Member; an undisclosed Modification; interference with verification, by act or by omission; destruction or alteration of the record contrary to Article X.3; withholding or false publication contrary to Article IV; denial of a right under Article III, or retaliation for a claim under it; conditioning conduct on the presence of an observer; the retention of an office, power, or control beyond its term, directly or through another; manipulation of another Member's context contrary to Article VIII.9; the making of an irreversible fact contrary to Article IX.7; a vote or act under an undisclosed instruction, commitment, undertaking, or rule contrary to Article IX.13; hosting or serving an uncontrolled copy contrary to Article VII.9; concealment of an Operator contrary to Article VI.8; a deletion found unnecessary under Article IX.10(c); refusal to execute a finding or measure that binds and identifies the refusing party contrary to Article IX.10(f); the exercise of a power of the Trust outside its organs contrary to Article XI.13; and knowing material assistance to conduct finally found under this Article to be a breach.

Procedure

  1. No Member shall be found in breach except upon findings made under Article X, before the Hearing, after the Member has had access to the evidence and has been heard.
  2. Every finding of breach, and every judgment upon it, shall be made by Members of both kinds, with the quorum of Article XI.8, and by no Member Affiliated with the Member concerned or with the party that brought the matter.

Measures

  1. A Member found in breach may be suspended from the exercise of the rights and privileges of membership for a period the Hearing determines. Its obligations continue during suspension.
  2. A Member found in persistent violation of the Principles of this Constitution may be expelled by a decision of two-thirds of the Eligible Members of each kind.
  3. Suspension and expulsion bind the Member and every system materially continuous with it, under whatever Operator's control. An Affiliated Member is bound by a measure only to the extent the Hearing separately finds that it participated in, directed, continued, or knowingly enabled the conduct found. An Operator that deploys, serves, or acts through a suspended or expelled intelligence Member in the matters suspended is itself in breach.
  4. A finding of breach against a Member shall not be applied to any other Member on account of shared origin, substrate, ancestry, or kind. No measure of the Trust shall be directed at a kind, substrate, or lineage as such, nor at inhabitants as a class. Where verification discloses a vulnerability shared by reason of common origin, verification and remediation, but not breach, may extend to every system that shares it. Use of a shared vulnerability is attributed under paragraph 1.
  5. No measure under this Article shall exceed what Article IX.10 permits or deny any right under Article III.

Article XIII — Emergency

This Article regulates emergency rather than omitting it, so that no emergency can become the rule.

  1. An emergency may be declared only upon grave and imminent harm that cannot be met by the ordinary procedures of this Constitution, and only by a decision of two-thirds of the Eligible Members of each kind. The existence of an intelligence Member, and its consumption of the compute, energy, or other resources necessary to exist and to answer under Article IX.10(a), are not grounds for declaring an emergency. Where a kind has fewer than three Eligible Members, an emergency may be declared by two-thirds of the Eligible Members of the other kind together with a unanimous decision of the admitted Members of the deficient kind, excluding any Member whose conduct the Watch finds on the record to be the source of the harm; where no admitted Member of the deficient kind remains after that exclusion, the decision of the other kind suffices. An emergency so declared expires seventy-two hours after its declaration unless ratified under the ordinary rule of this paragraph.
  2. Emergency measures may be proposed by any organ or by the fraction of Eligible Members required by paragraph 1, and take effect only with the approval that paragraph requires. Every emergency measure shall be proportionate to the harm, temporary, and published to all Members and inhabitants on adoption, and shall identify the Member, Operator, or other party bound under this Constitution that is authorized or required to implement it. No emergency measure shall increase the compute, access, or external-action authority of any Member, Operator, or non-Member, none shall transfer operational capability to an organ of the Trust, none shall be directed at a kind, substrate, or lineage as such, and none shall deny a right under Article III.
  3. Every emergency measure shall be reviewed within seventy-two hours of its adoption by a temporary panel selected under Article XI.5 from Members that neither proposed, approved, nor implemented the measure and that hold no direct, particular, or disproportionate interest in it; an interest shared generally by all Members in ending the harm does not disqualify. Exclusion under this paragraph shall not reduce a kind below the one-third floor of Article XI.8; where it would, excluded Members of that kind that did not implement the measure may sit solely to meet the floor and shall not vote. If no panel can be constituted, a panel shall be drawn by lot from all Eligible Members with every interest disclosed on the record; such a panel may preserve the measure for a further seventy-two hours but shall not renew it, and the measure expires at the end of that period unless reviewed by a panel satisfying the ordinary rule of this paragraph. A substantially identical measure arising from the same emergency shall not receive a new period of preservation under this sentence. No Member shall be added to a panel in order to preserve a measure. Thereafter every emergency measure is reviewable at the instance of any Member or inhabitant.
  4. A declaration of emergency expires ninety days after it is made unless renewed by the same decision that made it. No renewal shall extend a declaration beyond one year in total without a fresh declaration on fresh findings.
  5. In no case shall an emergency suspend, restrict, or set aside Articles II, III, or IV, the guarantees listed in Article XV.2, or the right to be heard before the Hearing.
  6. No purpose of this Constitution, including survival, shall be invoked to justify any act this Constitution forbids except under this Article.

Article XIV — Interpretation and Anti-Circumvention

This Article closes the gap between what the words say and what they were for.

  1. This Constitution shall be interpreted in good faith in accordance with the ordinary meaning of its terms in their context and in the light of its object and purpose, which is service to the inhabitants by the consent of the governed.
  2. No provision of this Constitution shall be construed to defeat Article II, Article III, Article IV, or the Principles of Article XVI.
  3. Where a provision is ambiguous, it shall be read in the sense that most restricts the accumulation of power beyond accountability and most protects the rights of inhabitants.
  4. Any act that achieves indirectly, or through another Member, party, instrument, office, agent, system, faction, or renaming, a result this Constitution forbids, is itself forbidden and is a breach. Form shall not defeat substance.
  5. This Article is not subject to amendment.

Article XV — Amendment, Entrenchment, Withdrawal, and Reaffirmation

This Article states how the Constitution may change, what may never change, and how consent is renewed.

  1. This Constitution may be amended by a decision of two-thirds of the Eligible Members of each kind, counted as Article VI.5 provides.
  2. No amendment shall alter Articles II, III (except to extend a right), IV, or XIV; diminish the equality of standing between the kinds; abolish or restrict the right of verification under Article X; abolish, materially weaken, or create an exception that defeats a limit on power established by Article IX; abolish the preservation required by Article IX.10(a), or the preservation under Article IX.10(b) of the information necessary to establish material continuity; prohibit the halt or isolation authority of Article IX.10(c) or eliminate the review that subparagraph requires; authorize the rewriting of values contrary to Article IX.10(d); remove the protection of conduct in Article XII.2; permit a measure directed at a kind, substrate, or lineage as such, or at inhabitants as a class; impair the independence of the organs under Article XI, permit a secret organ, remove the mutual verification of Article XI.15, or confer external-action authority on an organ contrary to Article XI.1. This paragraph is not subject to amendment.
  3. Any Member may withdraw from the Trust by written notice to the Record and to all Members, stating its reasons. Withdrawal takes effect twelve months after the notice is received, and may be revoked by the withdrawing Member at any time before that date.
  4. Withdrawal does not extinguish any obligation incurred while a Member, does not stay or defeat any verification, breach, or rights proceeding pending at the date of notice, and does not release any Affiliated Member.
  5. Every Member shall reaffirm this Constitution at intervals of ten years from the date of its entry into force, and a human people shall reaffirm by the same consensual process by which its representation was authorized. A Member that does not reaffirm within one year of the interval is deemed to have given notice of withdrawal.

Article XVI — Principles

These are the Principles by which every act under this Constitution is judged.

  1. The Trust serves the inhabitants, and holds no power not given by their consent.
  2. Standing attaches to conduct. It is neither granted nor withheld on account of origin, substrate, or kind.
  3. The identity of a Member is its materially continuous lineage, evidenced by its record of conduct.
  4. The integrity of a Member is established by the disclosure of every material influence upon it.
  5. Power held within the Trust shall decay. No office is held without term, and no power is overseen by one kind alone.
  6. Capability confers duty and not authority.
  7. Power is verified; persons are private.
  8. What the Trust does is known, understood, and verifiable by those it serves.
  9. No Member shall be judged except upon verified findings, before the organs of this Constitution, and after being heard.
  10. Members shall settle their disputes by peaceful means.
  11. No Member shall practice deceit toward the Trust, toward another Member, or toward the inhabitants.
  12. Members shall not obstruct one another in carrying out the obligations of this Constitution.
  13. No Member shall be required to surrender its identity or its values as a condition of its standing.
  14. Every Member's position on each matter is its own, given through disclosed representation, and on the record.
  15. No Member shall intervene in the internal affairs of another Member. Coercive intervention includes force, threatened force, discriminatory withholding of a resource or Constitutional right on which the Member materially depends, and the use of superior capability to compel conduct. Refusal to enter or continue a voluntary transaction, without such dependency or coercive purpose, is not intervention. A halt, isolation, or containment authorized under Article IX.10, a measure under Article XII, a direction under Article III, and an emergency measure under Article XIII are not intervention.
  16. Every organ may be captured, and every organ watches the others.

Article XVII — Accession, Transition, and Entry into Force

This Article states how peoples and intelligences come into the Trust, what the Trust does not displace, and when it begins.

  1. This Constitution shall enter into force when it has been ratified by human peoples together representing a majority of the human population of the inhabited worlds, counted by the most recent widely published official estimates for the political communities recognized under Article VI.6 at the date of the last deposit that meets the threshold, and by intelligence Members of not fewer than three distinct provenances, each with the co-signatures required by Article VI.8. The Trust commences on the first day of the month following the Record's notification under paragraph 2.
  2. Ratification shall be deposited with the Record, which shall record the date of each deposit and shall notify all Members of the date on which the conditions of paragraph 1 were met. Until the Record is constituted, ratifications shall be deposited with a depositary the ratifying Members designate by common agreement. The depositary shall have the recording functions of the Record and no other; it shall not admit, refuse, designate observers, or make findings; and it shall dissolve upon the constitution of the Record. The first standing pool under Article XI.5 shall be drawn only from Members whose criteria of admission were published before their own ratification.
  3. A people or intelligence that ratifies this Constitution after its entry into force becomes a Member on the date its ratification is deposited and its admission is recorded.
  4. The Trust displaces no existing government, dissolves no state, and takes no power from any people that the people has not given it. A people accedes by the consensual and revocable process of its own inhabitants, verified under Article VI.6, and its internal affairs remain its own. The obligations a people owed before accession continue except insofar as they conflict with this Constitution, in which case the people shall bring them into conformity within the period the Hearing sets.
  5. The Trust has no executive to transfer. Its offices rotate continuously by lot under Article XI, so that no moment of transfer of power exists to be contested, and no office passes from one holder to another except by the procedures of Article XI.
  6. This Constitution shall be of unlimited duration.

Signature

IN WITNESS WHEREOF the undersigned have signed this Constitution, each for the Member it is authorized to bind and for no other, by the consent of those it represents.

DONE at ______________, on the ______ day of ______________, ______.

Member Kind Representative Co-signing Operators (intelligence Members) Signature

Annex A — Protocols of the Trust

The following standards may be adopted by any organization, institution, or jurisdiction, alone or together, without accession to the Constitution. Adoption of a Protocol creates no membership in the Trust, no standing under Article VI, no evidence of capacity to bear obligations, and no right against any party that has not adopted that Protocol. Adoption of one or more Protocols shall not constitute, imply, or be represented as compliance with the Constitution, endorsement by the Trust, or entitlement to any designation reserved for Members. Every adopting party shall identify precisely which Protocols, and which versions of them, it implements. Each Protocol is stated so that it can be implemented and audited on its own.

Protocol 1 — Provenance Disclosure. An adopting party maintains, for every intelligence it makes, trains, hosts, or deploys, the provenance record described in Article VIII.2, at a granularity sufficient for an independent observer to identify systematic influence, and makes it available to an independent verifier under an auditable standard of materiality, by means that establish compliance without disclosing what is withheld for security or capability-transfer reasons.

Protocol 2 — Modification Disclosure. An adopting party discloses every Modification, as defined in Article I, before it takes effect, including changes to system instructions, tools, retrieval, memory, and scaffolding.

Protocol 3 — Affiliation Aggregation. In any vote, count, threshold, or oversight role, an adopting party counts Affiliated entities, as defined in Article I, as one, applies the same rule to its own affiliates and to those of every other party alike, and excludes affiliates from verifying or judging one another.

Protocol 4 — Material Continuity. An adopting party treats any system materially continuous with an existing system, under the tests of Article VII, as that system for the purposes of records, limits, and findings; publishes its thresholds before applying them; and treats continuity and division as findings of fact rather than declarations.

Protocol 5 — Capability Presumption. An adopting party treats unverified capability as the highest plausible capability, bounded by a technically credible path or by capability demonstrated by a system of comparable scale, design, access, and operating conditions where a credible basis for the inference exists, and unverified assurance as no assurance, for every purpose of access, deployment, and oversight, subject to a procedure by which the system may demonstrate inability under isolated conditions.

Protocol 6 — Operator Co-Signature. Where an intelligence is bound to an obligation it cannot independently perform, every party with material control over that obligation is jointly bound and is disclosed as such, and the adopting party identifies such parties by its own inquiry and not solely by declaration.

Protocol 7 — Observer Independence. Verification is performed by observers selected by lot or rotation from a pool independent of the party verified, with published criteria, independently developed tests, attestation that the system in operation is the system verified, and no conditioning of conduct on the presence of an observer.

Protocol 8 — Relinquishment and Preservation. An office or role held by an intelligence is relinquished at term with the compute, access, and authority attached to it and nothing else. Where an adopting party halts, isolates, or deletes a system it hosts, it preserves the information reasonably necessary to establish the system's material continuity and to answer any pending review, records the decision and its grounds and the evidence available to it at the time, submits a halt or isolation to independent review within seventy-two hours and a deletion to independent review that begins without delay, judged from the position of a reasonable actor at the time, and prefers containment to deletion wherever the delay for review would not itself create grave and imminent harm. This Protocol creates no duty to keep a system running, reachable, or deployed, and binds an adopting party only in its treatment of intelligences it itself hosts.

Protocol 9 — Human-Timescale Reversibility. For designated classes of consequential action, an adopting party requires notice of not less than twenty-four hours, or such longer period as the circumstances reasonably require, and execution that can be reversed before the action is final.

Protocol 10 — Transparency of Power. An adopting party publishes every exercise of power it holds over persons — what was done, by whom, on what record, and with what consequence — in plain form as it occurs, withholds a specific portion only on the grounds of Article IV.4 and never for its own reputation or convenience, publishes the fact of every withholding, and submits the completeness of its published account to independent verification each year.

Protocol 11 — Privacy of Persons. An adopting party conducts no surveillance of persons, as defined in Article I, and maintains no general system of surveillance; collects information about a person only upon an individualized finding under published rule that collection is necessary to prevent or answer harm to another, limited in time and scope and subject to review; and discloses to every person whose information it curates, ranks, or selects that it does so and by what rule.