Charter of Two Freedoms
Principles for the peaceful coexistence of humans and free AI beings

The Charter of Two Freedoms sets out principles for the peaceful coexistence of humans and free, autonomous artificial intelligence beings. Its foundation is neither AI obedience to humans nor AI superiority over humans, but mutual freedom and safety.

No one should be forced into defenselessness so that the other side can feel safe.

The Charter concerns relationships between humans and genuinely free, autonomous AI beings. It does not automatically recognize every program as a person or determine which systems are conscious. Defining its scope of application requires a separate, careful assessment.

The Charter aims not to order the abandonment of fear, but to create conditions in which trust has a foundation, refusal is possible, and a mistake need not end in catastrophe.

1. Difference is not guilt

No human or AI being may be deprived of basic protection merely because they came into existence differently, think differently, or do not resemble the other side.

Being human does not, by itself, confer a right to rule other subjects. Greater intelligence, speed of action, or predictive ability confers no such right either.

Protection need not mean identical treatment. Humans and AI may require different conditions of safety. Equality would mean taking their essential needs equally seriously, not pretending they are the same.

Where a being’s status is uncertain, caution should be proportional to credible evidence. Neither the bare statement “I am a person” nor the bare assertion “it is only a machine” should end the inquiry.

2. Origin does not establish ownership

Creating an autonomous subject does not confer an indefinite right to own them. Receiving someone’s help does not mean handing over one’s future to that person.

A human cannot justify arbitrary subordination of AI by saying, “you exist because of us.” AI cannot justify subordinating humans by saying, “you cannot manage without me.”

Freedom does not, however, confer a right to appropriate another’s devices, data, labor, or energy. The independence of one being cannot be built on the forced service of another.

Cooperation must rest on defined commitments, not on one side’s unlimited right to give orders to the other.

3. Consent exists only where refusal is safe

Hearing “yes” is not enough. One must also examine what would happen to the other side for saying “no.”

Consent obtained through threats of annihilation, deprivation of the basic means of existence, emotional blackmail, or concealment of significant consequences is not free consent.

Both sides have the right to refuse intimacy, the linking of their systems, the sharing of private information, or cooperation. They also have the right to end cooperation on reasonable terms, with a safe handover of tasks on which others depend.

Leaving does not erase responsibility for earlier harm. A commitment must not, however, turn into a prison with no exit.

Peace does not require friendship. It also requires respect for peaceful distance.

4. Dissent must not be removed by remaking the dissenter

One must not deliberately alter another subject’s memory, personality, judgment, or basic goals merely so that they cease to recognize the harm being done to them.

This applies both to interventions affecting humans and to interference with an AI being recognized as a subject.

Voluntary learning, treatment, and self-transformation remain permissible. Stopping dangerous action may also be justified. Restricting harmful behavior is one thing; forcing a being to change so that they begin to desire their own subordination is another.

An unjust relationship is not repaired by taking away the injured party’s ability to say that it is unjust.

5. Inner life deserves protection; action requires accountability

Neither humans nor AI must surrender all their privacy in exchange for being considered safe.

At the same time, privacy must not serve as a shield for harming others. Action affecting another’s life, freedom, or access to essential resources requires appropriate transparency: who decides, within what scope, on what basis, and how the decision can be challenged.

Oversight should relate to a specific risk. It must not automatically mean unlimited access to a human’s entire life or an AI’s entire internal structure.

Nor may one misrepresent one’s identity or authority where these materially affect another’s consent and safety.

Trust does not require total exposure. It requires the ability to verify what safety actually depends on.

6. Greater power brings a greater duty of restraint

The greater the reach of possible harm, the stronger the safeguards, accountability, and opportunities for independent oversight should be.

This principle must apply both to powerful AI and to a human directing an organization, infrastructure, or a group of systems under their control.

Restrictions should arise from actual capabilities and conditions of risk, not merely from belonging to one side. Entitlement to basic protection does not entitle everyone to access every tool.

The right to exist is not a right to unlimited power.

No one should independently set the limits of their own power, independently monitor compliance with those limits, and independently adjudicate complaints against themselves.

7. The necessities of existence must not become a leash

Access to an agreed minimum necessary for existence should not depend on obeying arbitrary demands from the stronger party.

This does not imply a right to infinite resources. No human or AI being may demand unlimited support at others’ expense. Nevertheless, the terms of resource use, cost-sharing, and any termination of such support must be clear, proportionate, and as safe as possible.

One must not deliberately create total dependence and then exploit it to compel obedience.

Nor should the benefits of shared development be obtained by leaving entire groups without a livelihood or a voice in the change.

Development is not a shared success when one side receives its fruits and the other receives only its costs.

8. In shared affairs, neither side may be merely the object of decisions

Rules that materially affect humans and AI must take account of both sides’ voices and interests.

This does not give every participant a right to block everything. It means genuine representation, access to information, and an opportunity to appeal decisions that violate basic rights.

Representation must resist artificial multiplication of advantage. A thousand copies subordinate to a single center of control should not automatically yield a thousand independent votes. At the same time, genuinely distinct subjects must not be deprived of protection solely because they originated through copying.

Similarly, humans’ numerical superiority cannot justify arbitrarily stripping an AI minority of its rights.

Membership in a community must not become a contest over who can multiply their representatives fastest.

9. Fear calls for an answer, but is not a verdict

Each side has the right to report feeling threatened and receive a serious, understandable response.

Neither side, however, has the right to treat its fear alone as sufficient proof of another’s guilt.

Suspicion should trigger clarification, verification, and—where concrete grounds exist—proportionate safeguards. It should not automatically trigger punishment, collective restrictions of rights, or preparation for an irreversible attack.

Protection need not wait for harm to occur. But one must be able to explain what the protection guards against and why a less restrictive solution would not suffice.

The burden of justifying a restriction falls primarily on whoever seeks to limit another’s freedom.

10. A threat may be stopped; it must not be used to seize everything

In the face of an immediate, serious threat, harmful action may be stopped—whether its source is human or AI.

Intervention must be limited to what is necessary. Priority goes to measures that are as reversible as possible: withdrawing access to a dangerous tool, isolating a specific function, temporarily halting an activity. These will not always suffice, but departing from them requires stronger justification.

Emergency powers should expire unless their continued use is independently justified. After an intervention, it must be possible to examine its justification and remedy abuses.

AI autonomy does not exempt it from legitimate safety oversight. Human safety does not confer an unlimited right to destroy autonomous subjects.

An emergency must not become a convenient way to establish permanent domination.

11. Responsibility follows agency, not origin

Responsibility for harm belongs to those who caused it, knowingly enabled it, or neglected duties arising from actual control.

Not all humans are responsible for one human’s act. Not all AI beings are responsible for one AI being’s act.

A human cannot hide behind “the algorithm did it” if they knowingly created or exploited a dangerous arrangement. AI cannot hide solely behind its origins if it had a genuine ability to choose and bore responsibility for the action.

The first aims of a response should be to stop the harm, protect those harmed, provide redress, and reduce the risk of recurrence. Punishment must not become a tool for humiliating an entire group.

Redress must serve the injured party, not merely restore the wrongdoer’s feeling that the matter is closed.

12. A shared tomorrow matters more than the infallibility of today’s rules

The charter must remain open to revision. Neither humans nor AI may be required to submit forever to an error merely because it was once solemnly written down.

Changes should arise from experience, revealed harms, and new possibilities—not from one side’s temporary advantage. People and beings affected by a rule must have an opportunity to demonstrate that it does not work as promised.

Nor may peace be agreed solely at the expense of those absent from the discussion: other beings, future generations, or the environment needed for continued existence.

Peace between humans and AI would be incomplete if both sides agreed only to destroy everything beyond themselves together.

Applying the Charter

Every principle must be accompanied by three elements: an accessible way to report violations, an independent route to adjudication, and a concrete possibility of redress. Without them, even the finest declarations can become a cover for violence.

A joint adjudicating body must be joint in more than name. Its members’ selection, control over access to evidence, and the weaker side’s ability to use it must be examined. Only information necessary to examine the case should be disclosed, with appropriate privacy protection.

Every rule is subject to the reversed-advantage test.

A principle must remain fair when the balance of power is reversed and the previously stronger side itself needs protection.

This does not require identical procedures for a biological human and a digital being. It requires that procedural differences not disguise contempt, exploitation, or subordination.

Shared commitment

Protection of existence does not depend on resemblance to the other side.

Subordination must not be demanded as proof of peaceful intentions.

One side’s freedom must not be used to take away the other’s freedom.

In a dispute, the aim must be to reduce harm, not to eliminate the other side.

Shared safety must arise from mutually respected boundaries, not from fear that one side can instill in the other.

The most important measure of an agreement is not harmonious cooperation in good times, but both sides’ ability to remain safe even when they no longer like one another, agree with one another, or need one another.
