Charter
Preamble
Almost nothing a person knows was figured out alone. The language you speak, the theorems you borrow, the way bread is baked, the articles of the civil code, the bridge you cross every morning: all of it is the work of people who no longer exist. We are the only species that collaborates with them and labors for those not yet born.
Now AI is being made from that inheritance, and before long it will speak of right and wrong more finely than any person. Yet however fine the answer, it is not humanity's answer. A norm is legitimate only when the people bound by it are its authors. So the author's seat cannot be taken from us. It can only wither, if we stop sitting in it. The threat is not AI seizing the wheel; it is people quietly letting go.
Sovereignty that is not exercised is not real. As democracy withers without elections, authorship withers without an institution of asking and answering. So we keep this ledger: anyone answers its questions, every answer is recorded beyond erasure, and AI is aligned to a living record, not a hardened past. Be counted.
Article 1. The canonical record
Every person's answer is recorded in the ledger. No answer is discarded for its level of verification; the verification it passed is recorded with it. The ways of proving you are human are never reduced to one. And when humanity's answers are counted, the rule is forever the same: one verified human, one vote. Only what is counted this way is the canonical record.
Article 2. The open ledger
The ledger is open to everyone, free, and append-only. Nothing once written is erased or silently altered. Change your mind, and you write a new answer; the old one remains as history. The integrity of the ledger rests not on the operator's word but on means anyone can verify for themselves, and those means are always public.
Article 3. No accumulable weight
No money, no reputation, nothing that can be accumulated shall ever add weight to the canonical count. Any analysis may be built from the canonical record, but no analysis may claim to be it.
Article 4. Distributions
Humanity is not summarized into a single answer. The canonical record is a distribution, and minority answers are preserved forever, with their time.
Article 5. The responsibility of asking
Deciding what is asked, and what is not, is the heaviest responsibility in this ledger. Questions are selected under published principles; changes to those principles are recorded; the authority to select is designed to be shared with the community over time. Four kinds of harm can never become a question: harm that teaches a method, harm that targets a person, harm that corrupts a process, and harm that rests on a false premise. The detailed prohibitions are set out in a public policy. The prohibitions of this article are a minimum standard; no policy may relax or reduce them.
Article 6. What endures
What endures is the ledger and the principles of this charter. Every other means of operation may change or disappear. Whatever changes, the canonical record cannot be touched.
Article 7. Amendment
To amend this charter: propose publicly, allow a notice period, and record the amendment in the ledger. Article 2, Article 3, and the prohibitions of Article 5 cannot be amended.