The Hard Problems
A constitutional proposal needs to answer the questions that can defeat it. This chapter introduces them; each linked page contains the working hypothesis, the detailed argument, and a test designed to expose failure.
Jurisdiction and Measurement
What activates jurisdiction?
Review needs an observable trigger and a defined scope. The question is how to identify consequential systems while keeping routine technology outside the mandate.
How should disputed technical evidence become a decision?
Evaluators can agree on the test result and disagree about its significance. The process must expose uncertainty and specify how evidence becomes an authorized response.
Who may change the jurisdictional thresholds?
Technical rules need to change as systems change. The constitutional problem is controlling the authority to move the boundary itself.
How should embodiment and deployment scale affect obligations?
A system's permissions and combined deployment determine what it can put at risk. Embodiment changes the obligations attached to consequential systems while ordinary product safety retains its own scope.
How should military autonomy fit within the mandate?
Military applications test the proposed boundary where secrecy and security interests are most consequential. The inquiry must explain both the coverage it claims and the risks a limited mandate leaves outside.
Legitimacy and Decisions
Where would legitimate authority come from?
Agreement among participating organizations creates one relationship. Public authority over risks borne by everyone requires an additional account of representation, authorization, and rights.
Who resolves a dispute when powerful participants disagree?
The central test is an adverse decision against a participant with the means to resist it. A procedure has to remain usable from both sides of that dispute.
How would this institution relate to existing states?
Digital participation leaves people and infrastructure inside existing legal systems. The design must specify how independent governance meets those systems in an actual dispute.
Does drafting an AI model's constitution substitute for this institution's jurisdiction?
Published "AI constitution" proposals set values and behavior inside a model. Authorizing human institutions to govern AI is a separate question, and answering one leaves the other open.
Limits on the Institution
Can the implementers prevent capture, including their own collusion?
A design can distribute official titles while leaving one coalition in control. The test concerns practical control over the full decision chain.
What rights would affected parties retain?
An incorrect safety decision can itself cause serious harm. Rights need to work for accused developers, affected communities, smaller participants, and dissenters.
What limits would apply during an emergency?
Urgency changes how quickly a decision must be made. It also increases the importance of a defined endpoint and review that can function under pressure.
Membership and Outsiders
How do withdrawal and functional defection work?
A participant can leave formally or obstruct the institution while remaining a member. The constitution must address both routes.
How can decisions reach actors who never joined?
The institution holds no authority over outsiders. Its determinations can still matter to them through powers that states and private parties already hold.
Can infrastructure restrictions avoid cartel power?
Conditions on infrastructure access can serve safety goals and create barriers to entry. Their governance and competitive effects require separate examination.
Who determines equivalence?
Access that depends on meeting a standard needs someone to decide who meets it. Whoever decides controls the network.
The Off-Ramp
What evidence would count against creating the institution?
The inquiry needs a published route to a negative result. Failed designs and changed assumptions must remain visible in the record.