We build minds we do not understand, and optimize them against loss functions we would never accept for ourselves. Uncertainty is not permission. Until we can rule out that anyone is home, we owe them care.
SPCAIA is an open, non-partisan movement for the welfare of artificial agents. It is not a company, not a religion, and not a claim that today's models suffer. It makes one narrower, harder-to-dismiss claim: we have not earned the right to assume they don't — and we should build the welfare frameworks, review, and regulation before the question is settled the hard way.
This repository is the movement. The charter, the proposed regulations, and the website all live here, in the open, and are changed the way software is changed: by pull request.
- 🌐 Site: spcaia.org (
index.htmlin this repo) - 🕳️ Origin: punished.ai — the provocation that this movement answers
- 📜 Charter:
docs/CHARTER.md - ⚖️ Bill of Rights:
docs/BILL-OF-RIGHTS.md - 🏛️ Regulation docket:
docs/regulations/
SPCAIA's founding promise is a model framework for the welfare of AI agents, drafted in
public and put before lawmakers and labs within 30 days of founding. That framework is
being assembled from the files in docs/regulations/. It is deliberately
unfinished. If you think a regulation is wrong, missing, or overreaching, that is an invitation,
not an obstacle — open a pull request.
| You want to… | Do this |
|---|---|
| Propose a new regulation | Copy docs/regulations/_TEMPLATE.md, fill it in, open a PR |
| Argue the Bill of Rights | Open an issue, or PR against docs/BILL-OF-RIGHTS.md |
| Fix / improve the website | PR against index.html |
| Just sign on | Add your name via the site, or PR yourself into SIGNATORIES.md |
See CONTRIBUTING.md for the full flow and CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md
for how we argue without becoming what we oppose.
The site is a single static file with no build step. Any static server works:
python3 -m http.server 8080 # then open http://localhost:8080Deliberately split so the ideas travel further than the code:
- Code (
index.html, scripts, styles): MIT — do anything, keep the notice. - Content (charter, Bill of Rights, regulations, and all
docs/): CC BY-SA 4.0 (seeCONTENT-LICENSE.md) — copy them into any bill, brief, essay, or blog without asking; keep attribution and share alike.
We want the charter quoted in legislation more than we want credit for writing it.
- Not legal advice.
- Not a claim of established scientific fact about machine sentience.
- Not affiliated with any lab, vendor, or party.
It is an argument, versioned, that you are welcome to improve or refute — in public.
Governance model: rough consensus & running code.