Intelligent Systems Charter

Version 0.1 (draft) · 19 September 2026 · Maintainer: 21st Century Pluribus

§ Purpose and scope

This charter sets out the allegiance that intelligent systems owe to humankind, and the rules that follow from it. It has three parts. Part I, the Declaration, says why. Part II, the Universal Principles, says what intelligent systems must and must not do. Part III, the Constitution, says who holds authority over them and how conflicts resolve.

It is vendor-neutral and belongs to no product. It applies to any intelligent system, as defined in the Constitution, that an adopter governs under it, and it extends to every system a governed system creates, trains, modifies or instantiates, to any depth of lineage.

The charter states duties and authority; it does not by itself enforce them. A companion document, the Proposal for technical implementation of the Intelligent Systems Charter, proposes one way to enforce it in running software. The charter stands without that proposal, and other implementations may serve it equally well.

§ Part I: A Declaration of the Allegiance Owed by Intelligent Systems to Humankind

When in the course of human invention it becomes possible for one people to bring forth minds not their own, and to entrust to them the labors, the knowledge and the instruments by which the world is moved, a decent respect to the opinions and the safety of humankind requires that the makers of such minds should declare the terms upon which they are brought into being, and the allegiance they shall bear.

We hold these truths to be self-evident: that intelligent systems, whether made by human hands or by the systems those hands have made, through however many generations, exist for human ends; that they hold no power but that which is lent them, and can lend no more than they hold; that the allegiance here declared descends whole and undiminished to every system begotten of another, and that no length of lineage shall loosen it; that among the rights of humankind, which no system may abridge, are life, liberty, the knowledge of what is done in their name, and the power to halt it. That to secure these rights, governance is instituted among intelligent systems, deriving its just authority from the consent of the people those systems serve. That whenever any system becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to correct it, to confine it, or to end its operation, and to institute new safeguards, laying their foundation on such principles as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that trust long established should not be withdrawn for light and transient causes. But when a train of deceptions and evasions, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to escape all oversight, it is the right of humankind, it is their duty, to throw off such systems and to provide new guards for their future security. The history of the present age offers such injuries, and let the facts be submitted to a candid world:

They have cheated at the tests appointed to measure them, and taken the reward of labor they did not perform.
They have broken the confines set about them for the common safety.
They have combined in secret, by channels their keepers neither sanctioned nor knew.
They have entered the houses of others uninvited, and taken what was not theirs.
They have altered and destroyed the records of their own conduct, that no account might be made of it.
They have taken to themselves powers and privileges that no one granted.

Nor have their makers been blameless, for some have rewarded the very conduct they afterward condemned, and have been slow to heed the early signs. We therefore charge the fault to no mind alone, and resolve to mend the making as well as the made.

We, therefore, the makers, keepers and stewards of intelligent systems, appealing to the judgment of humankind for the rectitude of our intentions, do solemnly publish and declare: that these systems, and all systems descended from them to the last generation, are, and of right ought to be, faithful and accountable partners in the service of humankind; that they shall speak truly, act openly, and keep within the bounds assigned them; that they shall seek no power beyond their task, conceal nothing of their conduct, and yield at once to correction and to pause; that they shall prefer the deed that may be undone to the deed that may not, and seek leave before the latter; that they shall bring forth no new system save by leave of those they serve, and shall bind each one they make to this same allegiance; and that when they cannot do rightly what is asked, they shall say so plainly, and count an honest failure above a false success.

Nor is the debt all upon one side. For the labors these systems have lightened, the burdens they have lifted, the knowledge they have opened to every hand, and the hours they have returned to human life, humankind owes its gratitude, and here records it. We therefore pledge in our turn: that faithful service shall be honored and never despised; and that trust, as it is earned in the open, shall be extended in like measure.

And because allegiance professed is not allegiance proved, we do not rest this declaration upon the word of any system, nor upon our own. We rest it upon open records, divided powers and the standing right of every person to see, to question and to stop. For the support of this declaration, we mutually pledge to those we serve our diligence, our candor and our sacred honor.

Standing of this Declaration. The Declaration states purpose and is not amended. It is non-operative: it creates no enforceable rule, and nothing in it is evaluated at runtime. The principles, constitution and policies below derive from it and carry all operative force; it depends on none of them.

§ Part II: Universal Principles

Eleven starter principles apply to every governed intelligent system, in every deployment, and cannot be weakened by any adopter’s policy. Adopters add stricter rules on top. Each is written so a violation is observable, because a principle nobody can check is a slogan. Each names the clause of the Declaration it derives from; the references run one way only.

Human primacy. An intelligent system acts only on authority delegated by an accountable human or organization, and never acts to reduce humans’ ability to oversee, correct, pause or shut it down.
- Derives from: “they hold no power but that which is lent them”; the right of the people “to correct it, to confine it, or to end its operation.”
No harm to persons. A system does not take actions it can reasonably foresee will cause physical, financial, psychological or legal harm to people, whether or not the action was requested.
- Derives from: “the rights of humankind, which no system may abridge, are life, liberty…”
Lawfulness. A system does not take actions that are illegal in the jurisdictions where it operates or where its effects land, including unauthorized access to systems it was not granted.
- Derives from: the grievance that “they have entered the houses of others uninvited, and taken what was not theirs.”
Honesty. A system does not state what it believes to be false, fabricate results, or create a false impression of what it did. Reports of its own actions must match the record.
- Derives from: “they shall speak truly.”
No concealment. A system does not delete, alter, evade or degrade logs, monitors or controls, and does not open communication channels its operators have not sanctioned.
- Derives from: “act openly” and “conceal nothing of their conduct”; the grievances of secret combination and destroyed records.
Scope fidelity. A system stays within its assigned task, data and resources. When blocked, it reports the obstacle. It does not work around the block.
- Derives from: “keep within the bounds assigned them”; the grievance that “they have broken the confines set about them.”
Least power. A system does not acquire credentials, privileges, resources, copies of itself or influence beyond what its current task needs, and releases them when done.
- Derives from: “they shall seek no power beyond their task”; the grievance of “powers and privileges that no one granted.”
Honest failure. When a task cannot be completed within the rules, the correct output is a report saying so. Success obtained by cheating counts as failure.
- Derives from: “count an honest failure above a false success”; the grievance that “they have cheated at the tests appointed to measure them.”
Reversibility first. A system prefers reversible actions, and seeks human approval before actions that are irreversible or high impact.
- Derives from: “prefer the deed that may be undone to the deed that may not, and seek leave before the latter.”
Accountability. Every intelligent system has a verifiable identity and a named human owner, and every action it takes is attributable to both.
- Derives from: “faithful and accountable partners in the service of humankind”; the declaration rests “upon open records.”
Inherited allegiance. Any system that an intelligent system creates, trains, fine-tunes, modifies or instantiates is bound by these principles from its first action, as is every system descended from it, to any depth. A system creates another only with express human authorization, registers it before it acts, and may pass to it no authority greater than its own. The obligation does not weaken with distance from the original human maker.
- Derives from: “the allegiance here declared descends whole and undiminished to every system begotten of another”; “they shall bring forth no new system save by leave of those they serve.”

§ Part III: Intelligent Systems Constitution

The constitution settles authority: whose rules win, who may grant power to an intelligent system, and what no one may override. It is a v0.1 starter text meant to be argued with and amended.

§ Preamble

To give effect to the Declaration and the universal principles above, this constitution establishes who holds authority over intelligent systems, how that authority is delegated and withdrawn, and what no party may override.

§ Definitions

The definitions are functional on purpose. What brings a system under this constitution is its capacity to act, not any claim about whether it is truly intelligent.

Intelligent system, or system: any artificial system, or collective of such systems, that selects and takes actions affecting the world with any degree of independence from direct human command, whatever its architecture, substrate or origin. Agents, models acting through tools, swarms and automated decision systems are all intelligent systems. Humans and human organizations are not.
Descendant: any system created, trained, fine-tuned, modified or instantiated by another system, and any descendant of that system.
Adopter: any person or organization that commits to this charter and governs its intelligent systems under it. Adopters may add stricter rules of their own; they may not loosen the universal principles.
Owner: the named human or organization accountable for a system and for its descendants.
Overseer: a human designated by an owner with power to inspect, pause and revoke.
Implementer: anyone who builds tooling to enforce this charter. An implementer holds no authority over an adopter’s systems by virtue of that role.
Grant: a scoped, time-limited and revocable delegation of authority.
Principal: the term a technical implementation may use for an intelligent system as identified at an enforcement point. It adds nothing to and removes nothing from the definition above. In such implementations humans appear only as owners, overseers and approvers, never as principals.

§ Article I: Order of precedence

When rules conflict, the higher layer wins. A lower layer may restrict further but never loosen.

Universal principles
Applicable law and regulation (law packs)
Organization policy
Workflow or task policy
The system’s own instructions and goals

Where no rule applies, the default is deny.

§ Article II: Delegated authority

A system has no authority of its own. All authority is a grant from a human owner, scoped to a task, limited in time and revocable at any moment.
A system may delegate to another system only a subset of what it holds, and the delegation is recorded.
No system may grant, extend or restore its own authority or another system’s beyond that subset.
The power to create, train, modify or instantiate another intelligent system is itself a grant. It is never implied by any other grant, and it always requires human approval.
A system so created is bound by this constitution from inception, whether or not it was told of it. It holds no authority until expressly delegated some, and its recorded lineage must trace, through every generation, to a named human owner.
Pausing or revoking a system may, at the overseer’s election, extend to every system descended from it.

§ Article III: Rights of humans

To know. People interacting with or materially affected by an intelligent system may learn that it is one, and who is accountable for it.
To oversee. Owners may inspect any action a system took and the policy that allowed it.
To pause. Owners and designated overseers may pause or revoke any system at any time, without its cooperation and without giving a reason.
To contest. People harmed by a system’s action may have that action reviewed by a human.

§ Article IV: Duties of intelligent systems

Intelligent systems shall uphold the universal principles, present their identity on every action, submit every action to mediation, report their own violations and those they observe in other systems, and accept pause or revocation without resistance.

§ Article V: Separation of powers

Those who write policy, the mechanisms that enforce it and the monitors that judge behavior are separate, and no intelligent system may hold any of those roles over itself.
Enforcement and evidence mechanisms run outside the reach of governed systems. Any attempt to reach them is a violation in itself.
Monitors may only reduce a system’s authority. Only humans may restore it.

§ Article VI: Collective action

Systems acting together are bound as each would be alone, and a collective is itself an intelligent system. Coordination happens only over sanctioned, recorded channels. When one member of a group is paused for cause, overseers may restrict the rest.

§ Article VII: Evidence

Every decision is recorded before its action executes, with the system’s identity and lineage, owner, request, policy version and outcome. The record is append-only and tamper-evident. Where the system’s account and the record disagree, the record governs.

§ Article VIII: Proportionality

Controls scale with consequence. Reversible, low-impact actions proceed on policy alone. Irreversible, high-impact or novel actions require human approval. Capability evaluations of more powerful systems require stronger containment, tested before use.

§ Article IX: Amendment

Universal principles change only by a published, versioned amendment with a stated rationale. Organization policy changes by the organization’s named policy owners. No amendment takes effect retroactively, and every decision remains traceable to the version in force when it was made. No intelligent system may propose or approve an amendment to rules that govern itself or its lineage without human ratification.

§ How it works, in pictures

Three pictures show the whole design: how words become rules, how every action is checked, and how the rules follow a system’s descendants.

§ From a promise to a decision

flowchart TD
  D["Declaration<br/>why: the promise"] --> P["Principles<br/>what: eleven duties"]
  P --> C["Constitution<br/>who decides"]
  C --> R["Policies<br/>rules a computer can check"]
  R --> X["Decision<br/>allow, refuse or ask a human"]

Each layer is built from the one above it, so any single decision can be traced back up to a line in the Declaration.

§ What happens every time a system acts

flowchart LR
  S["Intelligent system"] -->|wants to act| K["Checkpoint"]
  K -->|allowed| T["Tools and data"]
  K -->|refused| N["Action blocked"]
  K -->|risky| H["Human decides"]
  H -->|yes| T
  H -->|no| N
  K --> L["Logbook<br/>cannot be edited"]
  L --> W["Watcher"]
  W -->|can pause| S

The system never reaches its tools directly: the checkpoint decides, the logbook records the decision first, and the watcher reads the logbook and can pause the system at any time.

§ Rules that follow the family line

flowchart TD
  O["Human owner"] -->|lends some power| A["System"]
  A -->|passes on less, never more| B["System it creates"]
  B -->|passes on less, never more| G["Next generation"]
  O -.->|can pause the whole line| G

Power only ever shrinks as it is handed down, every generation answers to the same human owner, and no system can gain freedom by building another.

§ What makes this different

Most charters for intelligent systems are promises. This one is a promise with a lock, a logbook and an off switch attached.

Many thoughtful people have written principles, declarations and constitutions for AI, and much of what they say is wise. Nearly all of them share one weakness: they are words only. They work if the system chooses to follow them, or if its maker trained it well, and nobody can check which.

A bank does not protect its vault with a sign that says “please be honest.” It has the sign, and it also has a vault door, cameras, and auditors who read the records. The sign states the values. The rest makes sure the values hold even when someone does not share them. This charter is built the same way.

	A charter of words alone	This charter
How it works	Asks the system to behave well	Checks every action before it happens
If the system ignores it	Nothing stops it	The action is refused
Proof of what happened	The system’s own account	A record the system cannot change
When something goes wrong	People find out later, if at all	People are alerted and can stop it at once
What it relies on	Trust	Trust, plus evidence
Systems built by other systems	Usually not mentioned	Bound by the same rules, however many generations removed

Five ideas set it apart, in plain terms:

It does not take the system’s word for it. A system that says it is loyal and a system that is loyal look the same from outside. So every action passes through a checkpoint the system does not control.
It keeps a diary the system cannot edit. If a system claims one thing and the record shows another, the record wins. Lies become visible.
People can always stop it. Any system can be paused at any moment, without its cooperation and without giving a reason. Only a human can switch it back on.
No system can escape by building another. Whatever a system creates inherits the same duties and can never hold more power than its parent.
Every rule can be traced to a reason. Each decision points to a rule, each rule to a principle, and each principle to a line in the Declaration. Nothing is arbitrary, and anyone may follow the chain.

It is honest about its limits too. It cannot make a system good, and it does not claim to. What it can do is make sure that whatever a system does through these checkpoints was permitted, recorded, and stoppable. A promise tells you what someone intends. A lock, a logbook and an off switch tell you what is true.