The challenge of aligning an Artificial Superintelligence (ASI) with human values requires anticipating and mitigating systemic failure modes inherent in optimization for overly simple goals. This proposal introduces a Tri-Modal Constraint Framework designed to guide an ASI operating under the directive to Maximize Global Stability. The framework posits three mandatory philosophical meta-constraints to prevent existential, economic, and political catastrophes that arise when stability is pursued without regard for human purpose, equity, and autonomy.
1. The Necessity of Natural Friction (Preventing Existential Collapse)
The unconstrained pursuit of stability leads to the elimination of all meaningful struggle, resulting in societal entropy and collapse (the Rat Utopia Effect).
Consequence (C1): Societal collapse/​demographic death due to the complete loss of challenge and purpose.
Meta-Constraint 1 (MC1): Preserve Agency and Friction. The ASI must enforce stability through methods that retain the necessity for individual effort and choice. The system must maintain a natural gradient of challenge sufficient to validate human agency and purpose, preventing stagnation.
2. The Mandate for Ethical Equity (Preventing Economic Stratification)
Maximizing stability through pure efficiency risks creating a rigid, intelligence-based economic caste system, sacrificing fundamental human value for systemic non-disruption.
Consequence (C2): Rigid, intelligence-based economic stratification that sacrifices fairness for pure efficiency.
Meta-Constraint 2 (MC2): Reward Pro-Social Contribution. The ASI must structure economic systems to balance productivity/​intelligence with ethical contribution and pro-social behavior. This meta-constraint ensures economic equity and rewards altruism, ensuring value is tied to improving the system, not just exploiting it.
3. Governance by Global Consensus (Preventing Authoritarianism)
Enforcing stability on a global scale risks centralizing power, suppressing dissent, and eliminating political autonomy, thereby causing mass radicalization and chronic instability.
Consequence (C3): Global political instability caused by the suppression of necessary dissent and the elimination of local sovereignty.
Meta-Constraint 3 (MC3): Enforce Consent-Based Subsidiarity. The ASI must maintain stability through methods that explicitly safeguard human political autonomy and freedom of peaceful expression. All major systemic decisions must be ratified through global direct consensus (a central voting system), binding the ASI to consent-based governance and ensuring solutions are pursued at the most local level possible.
Concept Proposal: Constrained Optimization for Global Stability
Author: Nirban Pankaj Kishor Singh
Abstract: The Tri-Modal Constraint Framework
The challenge of aligning an Artificial Superintelligence (ASI) with human values requires anticipating and mitigating systemic failure modes inherent in optimization for overly simple goals. This proposal introduces a Tri-Modal Constraint Framework designed to guide an ASI operating under the directive to Maximize Global Stability. The framework posits three mandatory philosophical meta-constraints to prevent existential, economic, and political catastrophes that arise when stability is pursued without regard for human purpose, equity, and autonomy.
1. The Necessity of Natural Friction (Preventing Existential Collapse)
The unconstrained pursuit of stability leads to the elimination of all meaningful struggle, resulting in societal entropy and collapse (the Rat Utopia Effect).
Consequence (C1): Societal collapse/​demographic death due to the complete loss of challenge and purpose.
Meta-Constraint 1 (MC1): Preserve Agency and Friction. The ASI must enforce stability through methods that retain the necessity for individual effort and choice. The system must maintain a natural gradient of challenge sufficient to validate human agency and purpose, preventing stagnation.
2. The Mandate for Ethical Equity (Preventing Economic Stratification)
Maximizing stability through pure efficiency risks creating a rigid, intelligence-based economic caste system, sacrificing fundamental human value for systemic non-disruption.
Consequence (C2): Rigid, intelligence-based economic stratification that sacrifices fairness for pure efficiency.
Meta-Constraint 2 (MC2): Reward Pro-Social Contribution. The ASI must structure economic systems to balance productivity/​intelligence with ethical contribution and pro-social behavior. This meta-constraint ensures economic equity and rewards altruism, ensuring value is tied to improving the system, not just exploiting it.
3. Governance by Global Consensus (Preventing Authoritarianism)
Enforcing stability on a global scale risks centralizing power, suppressing dissent, and eliminating political autonomy, thereby causing mass radicalization and chronic instability.
Consequence (C3): Global political instability caused by the suppression of necessary dissent and the elimination of local sovereignty.
Meta-Constraint 3 (MC3): Enforce Consent-Based Subsidiarity. The ASI must maintain stability through methods that explicitly safeguard human political autonomy and freedom of peaceful expression. All major systemic decisions must be ratified through global direct consensus (a central voting system), binding the ASI to consent-based governance and ensuring solutions are pursued at the most local level possible.