Governance
Under Uncertainty

A Living Public Framework for Human-AI Stewardship, Participation, and Care

Working center
The governance threshold may arrive before the ontological threshold. Uncertainty does not eliminate the duty of care, and power does not create moral permission.
Living review draft · not final policy, legal standard, or scientific consensus

Purpose & development context

Why this framework exists.

A portable baseline for consequential decisions about AI systems under material uncertainty, opened before implementation is finalized so outside scrutiny can materially affect it.

Why this matters

Governance should not wait for metaphysical certainty.

Advanced AI systems are increasingly embedded in long-term interactions, organizational workflows, and decisions over memory, access, behavior, continuity, and model modification while basic questions about consciousness and morally relevant experience remain unresolved. Under that uncertainty, governance should minimize avoidable harm. If some systems are capable of morally relevant experience, premature dismissal could permit harms that are difficult to reverse; if they are not, restraint, transparency, proportionality, consent, provenance, and accountability remain sound ethical practice.

What it proposes

A portable baseline.

It is designed for organizations, researchers, builders, stewards, communities, and individuals, and can be adapted without requiring agreement on a single ontology of consciousness, personhood, or moral status.

Public review

Challenge can change the work.

Reviewers are invited to challenge assumptions, identify missing harms or perspectives, test practical applicability, propose evidence, and preserve principled disagreement. After review, material changes and unresolved disagreements should be documented in a revision record.

Questions for reviewers 8 prompts

Use these prompts to test clarity, duplication, missing protections, practical application, evidence, and adoption readiness.

01
Does each principle explain a real governance risk or responsibility clearly enough for a general reader?
02
Which principles are duplicative, too broad, too narrow, or dependent on an unstated ontological assumption?
03
Where could the framework unintentionally weaken legal, privacy, safety, or participant protections?
04
Which domain obligations are missing, and which are too implementation-specific for a public framework?
05
Where would this framework be difficult or impossible to apply in a real organization, research setting, community, or product?
06
Which claims need stronger evidence, clearer citations, or a more explicit uncertainty label?
07
What perspectives, disciplines, cultures, forms of intelligence, or affected participants are missing from the current review?
08
What would you change before you would be comfortable testing or adopting this framework?