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.
SIRDA editorial hypothesis
An independently constituted institution can seek defined arrangements for evidence, recognition, and implementation while retaining its own appointment and review procedures. Its operating plan can identify what happens when national law or a state instruction conflicts with a decision. This hypothesis fails if every consequential case requires fresh permission from the participant being constrained.
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The argument
The proposal seeks an institutional basis that can persist across national political transitions. Its digital form supports participation and a common public record. Its practical activity still involves people, organizations, infrastructure, and remedies situated in jurisdictions with their own law.
A usable operating plan must identify each legal relationship separately: organizational accession, employment of staff, handling of sensitive information, recognition of decisions, and action by infrastructure operators. It must state what can proceed under an existing agreement and what requires further authorization. Legal analysis belongs alongside the constitutional argument.
Conflict is the decisive test. Imagine a state directing a domestic provider to disregard a decision, or preventing an evaluator from accessing a system. The plan has to explain the next procedural step, the limits on action, and the consequences for the institution's claimed effectiveness. Institutional independence should be examined at those points of dependence.
How to test it
Map each step in a disputed restriction to the actor and legal authority needed to carry it out. Repeat with a conflicting domestic order and a state that declines recognition. Publish which parts continue, which stop, and what coverage is lost.
Related Ecosystem
- 80,000 Hours
- AI Safety Asia
- Allan Dafoe
- Americans for Responsible Innovation
- Andrea Miotti
- Ben Garfinkel
- BlueDot Impact
- Canadian AI Safety Institute
- Center for a New American Security
- Center for AI and Digital Policy
- Center for Security and Emerging Technology
- Center on Long-Term Risk
- Centre for Long-Term Resilience
- Centre for the Governance of AI
- Centre for the Study of Existential Risk
- CISA AI Security
- Concordia AI
- Connor Leahy
- ControlAI
- Cooperative AI Foundation
- DoD Chief Digital and AI Office
- EA Forum
- Epoch AI
- European AI Office
- EuroSafeAI
- Existential Risk Observatory
- Future of Life Institute
- Future of Life Institute Podcast
- Global Partnership on Artificial Intelligence
- Helen Toner
- Institute for AI Policy and Strategy
- Institute for Law & AI
- Institute for Progress
- International AI Safety Report 2026
- International Network of AI Safety Institutes
- ITU AI for Good
- Jack Clark
- Japan AI Safety Institute
- Kenya AI Safety Institute
- Lennart Heim
- MAGIC - Multinational AGI Consortium
- Markus Anderljung
- Max Tegmark
- Metagov
- NSA AI Security Center
- OECD.AI
- PauseAI
- Rethink Priorities
- Safe AI Forum
- Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI)
- The 80,000 Hours Podcast
- The Future Society
- UK AI Security Institute
- UN Institute for Disarmament Research (UNIDIR)
- WEF AI Governance Alliance
- Yi Zeng
Required expertise
Kinds of expertise this question draws on, and active Ecosystem organizations already tagged with a matching area. A tag match is not a ranking.
- International governance
- Centre for the Governance of AI
- International institutional design
- Institute for Law & AI
- International law & jurisdiction
- Institute for Law & AI
- State incentives & international coordination
- No tagged organizations yet.
Related questions
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- Where would legitimate authority come from?
- Who resolves a dispute when powerful participants disagree?
- Does drafting an AI model's constitution substitute for this institution's jurisdiction?
- How do withdrawal and functional defection work?
- How can decisions reach actors who never joined?
- Can infrastructure restrictions avoid cartel power?
Related failure conditions
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Contributions
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