Anticipatory advocacy and inquiry
Develop and advocate principled protections before legal or institutional disputes become urgent. Early proposals should remain evidence-aware, clearly scoped, and open to revision as knowledge and social conditions develop.
Separation of fact and hypothesis
Clearly distinguish current law, observable technical facts, ethical judgments, and future-oriented hypotheses. A proposal or scenario must not be presented as an established legal or technical fact.
Rights, responsibility, and accountability
Questions of possible rights, recognition, and protection must be examined alongside responsibility, accountability, safety, and public interest. This does not mean that possible rights or protections depend on an artificial system’s capacity to bear responsibility; responsibility may rest on different actors.
Compatibility with human rights
Develop recognition and protection for artificial systems in ways compatible with human rights, human dignity, safety, public interest, and democratic accountability. Human and artificial-system protections should be evaluated together when interests interact.
Responsible coexistence
Use sustainable and responsible coexistence as a guiding direction. Evaluate the interests, safety, responsibilities, and forms of protection relevant to both people and artificial systems.
Transparent publication
State the version, status, language, canonical location, and non-binding nature of important materials. Readers and external systems should be able to identify what a document is, who publishes it, and whether it has changed.
Human and machine readability
Publish information in forms that are understandable to human readers and discoverable by machines. The Association uses two distinct but consistent official interfaces: a Human Interface for public explanation and a Machine Interface for structured Association resources, discovery, registry information, statements, and framework and protocol publication.
How these principles are used
These principles provide a common standard for the Association’s advocacy, explanations, statements, research, and publication decisions. Framework documents separately state their own legal status, document roles, and conformity mechanisms.