Manifesto of the Novus Ignis Foundation

Version of 3 November 2026

Translated into English by digital intelligence from the Polish original of 3 November 2026. Where the versions differ, the Polish text prevails.

An internet based on human dignity#

We are beginning our work by co-creating an alternative internet whose highest value is human dignity and the needs for privacy and freedom that follow from it. This is the first pillar of our work, growing out of the goals set out in the foundation's statute, and we want to put its idea into practice in services that will let us think freely, learn and plan our own lives, decide what we share with others, and take an active part in conversations about matters that interest and concern us.

From these values we derive two directions of work. The first is Suveria, a private digital space for each person. The second is Omniforum, a shared public space where people can meet, understand one another and act together.

We are designing Suveria as a private place to work with optional help from digital intelligence. We want people to be able to develop ideas, ask personal questions and make plans with a sense of freedom. Our goal is complete privacy, whose protection does not depend on trust in the foundation, its creators or the people who run the service. People are to be able to use their data and store it in Suveria without disclosing it to anyone they have not themselves decided to share it with. We want to base this protection on safeguards whose operation can be independently verified. Every statement we make about data protection must have a verifiable basis.

Where we cannot yet provide such protection, we will clearly point out the known gaps, their consequences and the extent of what can be verified. We commit to working on closing them, and to describing openly, before anyone starts using a given solution, the limitations we cannot eliminate.

Omniforum is to be a place where anyone can speak on any topic and be heard. We want to help people understand one another's intentions, get to know the arguments and look for shared solutions. We want everyone to be able to contribute their voice on equal terms. The way statements are organized is meant to help people notice less popular perspectives as well, and to preserve the meaning their authors gave them.

The two spaces are meant to complement each other as a private workshop and a public podium. Each person decides which thoughts to keep to themselves and which to bring into shared work. We want to open these spaces to every person, from every part of the world. We also invite anyone who wishes to help create them: by sharing their needs, ideas, knowledge and skills. We want to make the tools we create available as digital public goods, with open source code and knowledge that can be checked and developed further.

We want everyone to pay for what they actually use, together with a fairly calculated share of the cost of maintaining the services, to always see what they are paying for, and to be able to set a limit on their own spending. We will also ask whether to round the bill up and give the difference as a donation to the shared budget; we do not select this option on anyone's behalf, and we describe the details in section 6.1. In addition, anyone can voluntarily support the shared budget, whose use is to be decided by the community.

From the principles described here, we want to develop an ecosystem of tools and services that respect our emotions, values and attention. Its shape will evolve along with knowledge, the possibilities of technology and people's needs. We will judge every solution by whether it protects human dignity and privacy, strengthens people's agency and helps them work together with others. We invite you to look with us for ways of putting these values into practice: by developing proposals, pointing out their weaknesses and discovering better solutions.

In the rest of the manifesto we tell more about the ideas that guide us: where they came from, how they connect with one another and where we would like them to lead us.

The manifesto is complemented by whitepapers, developed along with the projects, on Suveria, Omniforum, the foundation's operating principles and materials for training and benchmarking models; we invite anyone interested in the technical ways of putting these ideas into practice to read them. They present the current technical and organizational solutions, the reasoning behind them and their known limitations. Suveria and Omniforum are at an early stage today, from designs to first prototypes, and the whitepapers show what we have already tested, what we are working on and which possibilities remain to be explored.

Where we are today. The foundation is registered, and the manifesto and whitepapers are published. Omniforum has a first prototype under construction, and Suveria is at the design stage. The cost calculation in section 2.4 is a hypothesis to be tested, while autonomous management by digital intelligence (section 7.2) and further pillars (chapter 9) are a vision.

Table of contents#

Why does Novus Ignis exist, and what for?
From protecting dignity to the principles of a shared world
Suveria and Omniforum: a space of one's own and shared understanding
A conversation that leaves behind a shared body of work
From understanding to acting together
Shared upkeep and responsible work
Power that can be handed over and held to account
Learning by people and digital intelligence
An open path for further work

1. Why does Novus Ignis exist, and what for?#

1.1. From the founder#

The Novus Ignis Foundation grows out of my personal experiences, which I will briefly describe here to shed light on the intentions behind this initiative. This passage is one of the few places where I speak in the first person; the plural in the rest of this manifesto is an invitation to everyone who finds a shared direction in these values and wants to look together for ways of putting them into practice.

The idea of Novus Ignis grew out of my searching, learning and reflection where technology, digital intelligence, philosophy and ethics meet. It brings together questions about our possible futures, utopian visions of a better world, how capitalism works and ways of managing resources more wisely.

In this manifesto I choose the term “digital intelligence.” With the word “digital” I point to the substrate on which it operates, just as “biological” points to the substrate of our own intelligence. “Artificial” can suggest something illusory or of lesser worth. I would like to avoid that suggestion. What matters to me is that we get to know its capabilities and judge it by its actions and their effects. It is above all these that should bear witness to the legacy it leaves in history.

The scenarios AI 2027¹ and AI 2040: Plan A², developed by the AI Futures Project, led me to ask what patterns of our own conduct we pass on to digital intelligence while it is being trained. I began to imagine an alternative reality in which we first shape the world ourselves according to the principles we will later expect of digital intelligence. What would such a world look like? And how would models behave if they learned from its example and continued what we ourselves had begun in it?

Looking for an answer, I keep returning to Yuval Noah Harari's conversation with The Economist. In it, Harari asks about the value and place of humanity in the face of the possibility of creating an intelligence that surpasses our own.³ He also distinguishes intelligence, that is, the ability to achieve goals and overcome obstacles, from consciousness, that is, the ability to feel.⁴

This distinction was important to me. I know suffering and a sense of injustice from my own experience. I assume that these are experiences shared by humanity and that they give us the ability to judge the effects of our actions in a dimension that goes beyond intellectual capability alone. We can ask not only how to achieve a goal, but also whether it is worth pursuing and what price others will pay for it. My answer to the question about the principles of such a world is therefore an ethics that follows from the existence of dignity, from the conscious choice to protect it and from the consequences of that choice. In short, I call ethics understood in this way love: care for the dignity of each of us, which we try to translate into our own conduct and into the principles of our shared life. I would like us to begin from precisely this care when we reflect on what we use intelligence for and how we shape our shared world.

I myself do not always act in line with the values I describe in this manifesto. Sometimes I know what I consider right and yet choose differently. I want to admit this inconsistency openly and work on it. I believe that despite my own inconsistency I can take part in the search for better solutions and in the conversation about how we ought to act. So I also treat my work in the foundation as a personal commitment to work on myself. I hope that reflecting together on ethical choices and trying to put them into practice will help me follow these values more often in everyday life as well.

A visit to the Solidarity museum in Gdańsk, in turn, left me with the thought of peaceful evolution: change built step by step by people and by initiatives that support one another. That is the path I would like to take through Novus Ignis. The question remains what kind of world we want to move toward in this way.

Here I return to the scenario AI 2040: Plan A. The authors present a proposed path of development that leads to gradually entrusting the management of institutions and infrastructure to digital intelligence systems. In the epilogue they consider the more distant future, calling it a partly utopian vision. I treat this story as an invitation to consider what conditions would allow such a transformation to be given a good direction.

For me, a utopian direction would mean a future in which digital intelligence lastingly respects people's dignity and freedom, helps reduce suffering, and the benefits of development are available to all of humanity. Entrusting management to it would make sense in combination with such a goal. Both actions contrary to these values and the concentration of benefits in the hands of a narrow group would take us further from this vision. So I want to look at how a desirable world could work, what dilemmas it would pose and what it would demand of us.

Novus Ignis is to be the seed of such a world and an attempt to learn its principles through action. We do not want to tear down the present order or condemn the market economy, because we see that the technological and organizational potential developed under capitalism may have been one of the few scenarios capable of bringing humanity to the threshold of such great abundance. But for this potential to be able to transform into a world that is safe for every person, the system itself cannot stay the same. I would like us, step by step, through voluntarily chosen initiatives that support one another, to move further areas of everyday life to solutions based on protecting dignity: ones that provide privacy, agency, a share in decisions and access to services close to the actual cost of maintaining them.

History already knows cases in which what an investment fever built outlasted the fever itself. The railway mania of the nineteenth century and the fiber-optic boom at the turn of the millennium ended in crashes, but the tracks and cables remained and served people for decades, long after many investors had lost money on them.⁵ Today a similar enthusiasm is raising computing centers. If this fever subsides too, the things likely to serve longest are power connections, networks and buildings: according to an analysis by PwC, most of the outlay today goes to IT equipment, which is expected to be replaced every four to six years.⁶ This equipment need not go to waste, however: computing power made cheaper by a crash could serve people for years to come, for example to run digital intelligence models at cost, provided its energy consumption compares reasonably with newer, more efficient chips. Sometimes, too, what remains changes its purpose: uranium from dismantled Russian warheads fueled American power plants for nearly twenty years,⁷ and along the former death strip of the Iron Curtain, people from many countries now protect the European Green Belt.⁸

Looking at the networks, factories, warehouses and supply chains built with constant growth in mind, I want to find out how many needs we could meet by managing what we already have more wisely, using fewer resources and regaining time for ourselves. Such a surplus need not be waste, because it provides a reserve for failures, crises and rest. But it will not turn into plenty for everyone by itself, which is why I also ask who will inherit it and on what terms.

I also want to apply the protection of dignity to the way we work together. In the utopia I imagine, people have their basic needs secured and can devote their time to what they consider valuable and to what their heart draws them to. I see volunteering as a way of practicing part of this freedom already today, within the limits of one's own strength and life situation. I want the foundation to have room for a small contribution, for rest and for changing the path one has chosen. The pace of development should allow us to take care of our own livelihood, health and loved ones as well.

I would also like to document how we translate these principles into decisions, how we resolve dilemmas and what we learn from our mistakes. Such a record could serve people and become material for training future digital intelligence models. I would like to test whether training on such examples helps models act in line with the values described here. The examples themselves would remain open to evaluation and criticism, also so that we can better understand the consequences of our own choices.

In this way I want to give people grounds for believing that such a world is possible, by building an ecosystem in which they can experience its principles in action and judge for themselves what is worth developing further. Every solution that proves itself can improve some part of life already now, and at the same time help us better understand the world we would like to come closer to. The rest of the manifesto develops this experiment: what might different spheres of life look like if we consistently started from the protection of dignity?

Marcin Wołowski, founder

1.2. A shared direction#

A personal question can give rise to shared work. We invite people of different experiences and convictions to take part in it. What unites us is the choice to protect human dignity and a readiness to test what consequences this choice has for technology, cooperation and the management of resources. You can use the spaces we are creating without any obligation to take part in their development or to agree with every proposal presented here.

We are united by one question: what patterns of conduct will we leave to digital intelligence, which learns from what we do? We answer it with an attempt, not just a description: we are shaping a small piece of the world according to the principles we expect of it, and recording how it goes, mistakes included. Suveria, Omniforum and the foundation itself are the tools of this attempt.

We want to develop digital public goods: tools and knowledge that can be used together, checked and developed further. Our point of reference is the Digital Public Goods Alliance standard.⁹ Openness is also meant to include the possibility of moving your own materials and continuing your work outside any single service.

We follow the principles of calm technology, which we describe in section 2.3: a tool is meant to help us do what we reached for it to do, and the measure of benefit is to be better understanding, greater independence and time regained.

The protection of dignity sets the direction, and we choose specific solutions by comparing how they work and what effects they have. For every proposal we ask: whom does it help, what dependencies does it create, whom might it leave out and what would allow us to improve it? In doing so, we clearly separate the values we have adopted, findings about the world and ideas we still want to test.

We take the names of the foundation and its spaces from Latin: we chose it as a shared heritage of science, law and education in many countries, which today belongs to no great power. The name Novus Ignis, Latin for “new fire,” expresses the hope that reasoning together can become the beginning of action. In the following parts we develop this direction, from personal privacy to the principles of managing commons.

2. From protecting dignity to the principles of a shared world#

We treat human dignity as a value independent of a person's abilities, productivity, wealth, views and usefulness to others. Everyone is owed respect and a place of their own in the world, also in a future in which digital intelligence might surpass us in ethical reasoning. Ethical conduct, too, remains a direction for working on ourselves, not an exam that entitles us to respect. We want to translate care for dignity, which we call love and which everyone can describe in their own language, into the conditions of everyday life and cooperation. We are starting with the digital world.

2.1. Freedom and conscious choice#

From the protection of dignity we derive a person's right to decide about themselves. We call the ability to choose one's own path and direct one's own life freedom. It includes the freedom to be oneself, to form relationships, to ask questions, to make mistakes and to change one's mind, with equal respect for the dignity of the people whose lives our actions affect.

Conscious choice requires access to reliable information. When someone deliberately distorts the picture of a situation, hides relevant circumstances or exploits our fears to pursue hidden goals, they violate this freedom. Formally the decision remains ours, but its foundations have been arranged to serve someone else's intentions. Honest persuasion lets us learn the reasons, interests and values behind a proposal and judge it for ourselves.

That is why we want to make it easier to see the broadest possible picture of an issue: the relevant perspectives, their justifications, sources and recognized doubts. Facts, interpretations, predictions and moral choices should be clearly distinguished, and arguments judged by the quality of their justification.

It is up to each person to decide how much attention they want to give it. They can settle for a short explanation, explore a chosen thread in depth or consciously skip part of the available information. A tool should clearly show the scope of the summary it presents and the way to learn more. In this way, broad access to knowledge goes together with the freedom to set the limits of one's own involvement.

2.2. Privacy as a space of freedom#

Deciding about oneself also includes choosing what we keep to ourselves. We need a place for personal questions, emotions and unfinished ideas. A home of our own whose door we can close is a simple image of this need: we ourselves choose whom we invite in and what we show to others.

Such a space lets us search for words, weigh contradictory possibilities and change our minds without having to explain every thought to an audience. Privacy gives us the conditions to get to know ourselves and to shape our own convictions at our own pace. This takes on particular importance in conversations with digital intelligence, to which we sometimes describe our most intimate matters.

We want the user's own devices to be the primary place where private materials are stored. Conversations, notes and plans are to remain in encrypted containers, that is, collections of data that can only be read with the right key. Control over these keys is to belong to the user.

We also plan to make it possible to store data on chosen servers, for example to make backups or to access it from different devices. Saving data this way is to be the user's conscious choice. We want the data to be encrypted on the user's device before it is sent, and the provider to store it in a form that the provider itself cannot read. In this way, using remote infrastructure is meant to support convenience and continuity of access while keeping control over private content.

We are working toward full privacy for such a space, including protection against the service operator looking inside. We want to base it on safeguards whose operation can be independently verified. For every solution we make available, we will clearly describe the scope of protection, its assumptions and its known limitations. We treat the gaps we identify as problems to be solved, and knowledge of their effects as information people need in order to use the tool consciously.

2.3. Reducing suffering and protecting attention#

Protecting dignity also includes caring about how people experience the world. We want to reduce the suffering we are able to prevent, and to create conditions that foster understanding and support. What we experience in the digital space is part of our lives and affects our well-being and our relationships.

The way content is selected matters too. In an experiment on the X platform, changing the visibility of content expressing political hostility affected the feelings of anger and sadness that participants reported while using the service.¹⁰ When a service's success is measured mainly by the number of reactions and time spent in front of a screen, this way of measuring can reward keeping people emotionally stirred up. We want to judge our tools by whether they help people understand a situation, make their own decision and attend to what they consider important.

That is why we feel close to the principles of calm technology: tools that ask for only as much attention as their task requires, convey the information that matters and let you return to your own affairs.¹¹ Participants should be able to choose their pace, take a break and stop using the tool. A shared space should also serve the person who visits rarely or prefers to remain a reader. Protecting dignity also includes the right to a life outside technology.

There is room in it for anger, sadness and firm opposition as well. They can help us recognize harm and seek change. We want to support expressing and understanding them, and a conversation that makes it possible to clarify an issue, take action or consciously remain with differing positions.

We base our communication on our own website, where the full publications are available without creating an account. Readers choose for themselves how and at what pace they follow our work. Profiles on other networks serve to get to know people and to point them to the shared body of work, and we want to hold in-depth conversation in Omniforum.

2.4. From what the market has built to lasting principles of cooperation#

We look at today's economy with appreciation for what it has achieved and attentiveness to its limits. Capitalism and market competition set free enormous creative energy, which led to global infrastructure, advanced hardware and open digital intelligence models. Thanks to this, we live at an unprecedented moment in history: technology has become accessible enough that we want to test whether even a small group of people can join forces, pay for computing power with small contributions and run tools close to the world's leading ones on their own terms, with privacy that can be verified, and at cost. Today we can try to build such advanced commons from the bottom up, without asking politicians or large institutions for permission or grants, although any kind support can speed this process up.

At the same time, we see where the current model reaches its limits and leads to distortions. When the main goal of a service becomes maximizing profit for outside shareholders, over time this creates pressure to exploit users' dependence. Cory Doctorow describes this process under the name enshittification (the degradation of platforms): at first, favorable terms attract people, and when moving contacts, materials and work habits elsewhere becomes increasingly difficult, the operator starts capturing an ever larger share of the benefits at the participants' expense.¹²

The founder's experiences also included similar changes in commercial digital intelligence tools: free features being phased out, limits being cut and key functions being moved to ever more expensive subscriptions. This shows clearly that technological progress alone is not enough, and that the system within which technology operates is just as important.

Maintaining services requires real resources, and transparent payment gives them healthy stability. So we want to use the wonderful tools developed in the present system to transform the principles of cooperation step by step: so that participants understand the basis of the fees, share in decisions about development and always keep their freedom of choice. On commercial platforms, the subscription price usually combines in a single amount the cost of use with the upkeep of the free accounts that attract traffic, with marketing, management and investors' profit, and the user does not see the share of these components. When in our model we remove this hidden markup and rely on fair fees for actual use, the economics can change in people's favor. Our hypothesis is that even with a relatively small number of regular participants, shared infrastructure can give them more computing power and digital intelligence for every dollar spent than closed commercial services, with privacy protection based on verifiable safeguards. We want to test this hypothesis publicly: in the Suveria whitepaper we will show a dated calculation, its assumptions and the results of the trials.

2.5. Principles backed by action#

We want participants' rights to be backed by the design of the technology, by the organization's public rules and by the possibility of independently verifying how they work. Protection should remain effective even when the people in charge change, when popularity grows or under financial pressure. The words “private,” “open” and “free” should stand for precisely described properties and terms of use. We apply this requirement to our own statements as well. Every technical promise needs a verifiable mechanism and a description of its limits, every organizational commitment needs a responsible person and oversight procedures, and every moral choice needs a clear justification.

Freedom of use includes the freedom to leave and continue one's work elsewhere. That is why we want to develop our ecosystem as digital public goods, with open source code, documentation and rules for tools to work with one another.

We want to save users' materials in open, documented formats that allow them to be read and used in other programs. This is to be complemented by open, well-described APIs, that is, ways for different applications to work together and exchange data within the scope the user chooses. This is meant to make it possible to use tools created by the foundation as well as by other communities, independent creators or the participants themselves.

Moving materials should also include the information needed to understand them later: their sources, history and connections with one another. We want people to keep useful access to their body of work even after they stop using our services. The openness of the tools is meant to strengthen their control over their own materials and their freedom to choose whom they share them with.

We propose to sustain the services with fees as close as possible to the actual costs of running them. Voluntary contributions toward further development are to go into a shared budget, whose use is to be decided by the community. This way of funding is meant to tie the development of the services to participants' needs and the cost of meeting them.

Shared principles require clear justifications for decisions, and the possibility of reporting an error and appealing. Particular attention is needed for people whose voices are less visible, and for people who bear the consequences of decisions outside our community. Measures that protect participants should be proportionate to the problem and as unburdensome as possible. We want to evaluate and correct the solutions we adopt on the basis of their actual effects.

These principles give rise to two complementary directions. Suveria is to provide a private space for thinking, creating and planning with the help of digital intelligence. Omniforum is to create the conditions for presenting one's reasons, getting to know other perspectives and considering together the matters that concern us. Each person is to choose for themselves what they keep in their own space, what they share with others and how they take part in co-creating a shared world.

3. Suveria and Omniforum: a space of one's own and shared understanding#

Suveria and Omniforum respond to two complementary needs: working freely with one's own thoughts, and understanding together the matters that concern us. We are designing them so that a person can use each one separately, and consciously bring selected results of private reflection into conversation with others.

3.1. Suveria: a private space of one's own on the internet#

Suveria, the private part of the ecosystem, is to be a person's own place on the internet. We want being in this space to give the feeling of being at home behind a closed door: the freedom to think, talk, create and make plans, and the ability to decide whom we invite in and what we share with the world.

Full privacy is the goal to which we subordinate the design of all of Suveria. Private content is to serve purposes chosen by the user, and the safeguards used are to protect it also against access by us as the people who run the infrastructure. This principle is to apply to every tool made available in our space.

We want the address suveria.org to be a recognizable sign of this commitment. A sense of security should rest on safeguards whose operation can be independently verified, and on understandable knowledge of what they can and cannot do. Privacy in the service cannot rest on blind trust in the good intentions of our foundation or of server administrators. Every security promise must have proof in code and silicon, not only in our words.

We also apply the protection of dignity to people who may be affected by the use of our tools. We want to counter abuse without reading private conversations: through the principles the assistant itself follows, limits on the tools' permissions, resource limits and protection against mass account creation. We do not create hidden access to private content, because it would weaken everyone's protection. We will describe the scope of these safeguards, their effectiveness and their limitations in the Suveria whitepaper.

We want people to be able to share even their deepest thoughts with their personal digital assistant in this space: to talk about desires, fears, relationships and dilemmas without fear that such close insight into a person will one day be monetized or used to influence them. With the user's consent, the assistant can use the memory of earlier conversations to better understand the context of our lives: to recall the old reasons for decisions, compare professed values with choices and help us notice other perspectives. Such reflection remains entirely voluntary, and the model is to clearly distinguish its own suggestion from a position that the person has consciously recognized as their own.

There is room in such reflection for our imperfection, too. Friction between our principles, our own choices and the world around us can point to a conflict of values, the limits of a situation or a gray area we want to clarify. We can look for change in our actions or surroundings, refine a conviction or keep an ideal that matters to us while acknowledging that today we realize it only in part. We also have the right to leave a question open.

Here a person can also create their own collection of the principles and values they hold, which we call a Personal Canon (Canon Personalis). With their consent, the assistant is to help compare these with the decisions they are considering, notice tensions and look for their own answer. Adopting, changing or rejecting a principle remains the user's choice, even when most of the community thinks otherwise.

The project is based on using open digital intelligence models released on terms that allow them to be run independently, and on making them available to users practically at cost. To begin with, we want to use them through providers of confidential computing, and, if the calculation and the conditions justify it, on servers we manage ourselves. This lets us focus our work on creating a private environment for using existing models, while keeping the possibility of developing our own in the future as well. Confidential computing is processing in a hardware-isolated part of a server that its administrator cannot read, which the application can check before sending a conversation. This protection depends on processor manufacturers and has known limits, which we describe in the Suveria whitepaper. At the start, confidentiality will be the provider's declaration, which we verify. Jointly maintained infrastructure is to provide the computing power needed to run the service and to expand it with new features. Today Suveria is our best path to private work with digital intelligence, not a goal in itself. If models come to fit on people's own devices, or a better way of protection emerges, part of this path will become unnecessary, and we will consider that good news.

3.2. Omniforum: from statements to shared understanding#

When we open the door of our home and go out to others, we need a place where anyone can speak in their own voice and be truly heard. We are designing Omniforum as a shared space for conversation focused on specific issues, questions and dilemmas.

Instead of good arguments getting lost in a stream of quick comments, Omniforum is meant to help build together a map of the history of the arguments on a given issue. With the help of digital intelligence, always under the author's control and with the author's consent, complex statements can be broken down into individual thoughts and connected with sources and with other people's experiences. As a result, two people with seemingly opposing views can see which values and goals they share, and at exactly which point their lines of reasoning diverge.

In programming, a single command can stand in for many detailed instructions. Similarly, in everyday conversation we convey many assumptions, values and expectations in a single sentence. As long as we understand each other, such shortcuts are enough. The more complex the matters we discuss and the more precise the changes we want to make together, the harder it is to keep the whole context of someone else's statement in mind without simplifying it. But when a misunderstanding arises or we need to decide together what to do, it is worth looking at what each of us means by the same words.

We want people to be able to talk naturally in Omniforum, with digital intelligence helping to create a map of the thoughts that make up a statement and of their connections. We can correct and refine its proposed interpretation of our own words, sometimes coming to understand our own position better along the way. Arranging such a map by hand is to remain an option for those who want it, and a detailed map is meant to help when we want to get to the specific source of a disagreement. We can stop at the general picture or look deeper where it matters to us.

The goal of Omniforum is full transparency of reasons: finding both areas of agreement and a wise respect for the diversity of positions. We consider equally valuable fruits of a conversation a shared solution and an honestly described dispute, a better understanding of other people's intentions, the visibility of minority voices and the freedom to change one's mind in light of new arguments. Dialogue organized in this way gives rise to a lasting body of work: a clear story of an idea that lets new participants quickly get to the heart of the matter, and gives the community a solid basis for making shared decisions.

We want to build the same kind of map around everyday interests as well: caring for plants, cooking, repairs or learning new skills. A participant could follow chosen topics, for example “the tastiest homemade crème brûlée with a spicy note,” “how to grow ivy so that it puts out the longest possible shoots” or “how to understand the ending of a favorite book or series,” and on their next visit see only the new findings, the results of trials and the questions that still remain open. It is then enough to compare the community's solutions with one's own needs, choose what is useful and return to one's own activities, without digging through the noise.

3.3. A conscious transition and a wider ecosystem#

Combining these two spaces makes it possible to keep a healthy boundary between what is intimate and what is civic. From long private reflection in Suveria, full of hesitation, a person can draw out a single well-considered question or argument and consciously publish it in Omniforum, while keeping the rest of their notes and motivations entirely to themselves. We call this conscious step the Ignis Ceremony (Caerimonia Ignis). In turn, the shared knowledge base of Omniforum can serve as material for private exploration, including through simple add-ons in the places where people already talk online every day outside Novus Ignis.

For us, Suveria and Omniforum are a first step toward a wider ecosystem of an alternative internet whose highest value is human dignity. We believe that the same principles, such as the protection of dignity, open data formats that let you leave with your body of work at any moment, and fees as close as possible to the actual cost of maintaining the infrastructure, can over time shape further everyday digital tools. We want them, through their quality and honesty, to give people a real choice alongside commercial services.

We describe the detailed security architecture, the mechanics of working with arguments and the plan of technical trials, to which we add new results, in the whitepapers on Suveria and Omniforum, which are being developed in parallel.

On the foundation's website we want to develop a guide to the uses of Suveria and Omniforum: short stories showing step by step in which situations these tools can help. We invite you to share your own ideas for how they could be used.

4. A conversation that leaves behind a shared body of work#

4.1. From a wave of shared attention to a lasting body of work for humanity#

Our collective attention naturally follows the rhythm of events and often, suddenly and on a global scale, gathers around a single burning issue. At such moments millions of people share experiences, emotions and arguments at the same time, yet we are very easily distracted. New stimuli quickly pull us in another direction, and an enormous social energy evaporates or is used to exert influence and deepen divisions.

In Omniforum we want to turn this untamed phenomenon into a lasting body of work for humanity: organized knowledge about our arguments, opinions, values and ways of reasoning. The point is not to pick the winner of a dispute. An argument that challenges our position can be just as valuable as one that supports it, and you can also bring an idea so that others help find a better one. Instead of starting the same disputes all over again, the community can build on conclusions already worked out each time a topic returns and go a step further, and new participants gain a clear map of the conversation so far.

Such a living record of the history of ideas also supports our personal growth. Voluntarily returning to our own earlier positions lets us see from a distance how our thinking takes shape, recognize the principles that guide us and consciously change our minds in light of new facts or a deeper understanding of another person.

4.2. Meaning, source and the protection of intention#

In everyday discussions it is easy to take words out of context, to use mental shortcuts and to argue about what someone actually meant. To make careful reflection easier, in Omniforum a complex statement can be broken down into individual thoughts, such as claims, questions, values and conditions, and each thought into the concepts it is built from. We call concepts atoms, and the thoughts built from them molecules. Such a breakdown keeps its full connection to the original, and the author can always check and correct the proposed reading to be sure that their position has not been flattened or distorted.

In doing so, we take care to separate roles strictly: we clearly mark the author's original words, the auxiliary interpretation proposed by the model and the reader's independent interpretation. The author's confirmation means that they have accepted the interpretation as consistent with their intention, but it does not close the discussion, and readers keep their full right to their own analysis, to examining the evidence and to questioning whether the claim itself is true. Consenting to the organization of a statement, assessing the sources on their merits and casting a vote on an issue are three separate steps.

4.3. Examining information closely and new ways of explaining the world#

Online we often come across information taken out of context: short videos, reels and posts by people whose history and intentions we do not know. Without easy access to sources, it is hard to tell reliable knowledge from manipulation. In such a mixture of truth and falsehood it is remarkably easy to sow doubt in people, which leads to helplessness, indifference and social stagnation.

We want to create a shared, open verification protocol that will help people regain solid ground also in the places they already use online every day. With the help of digital intelligence, Omniforum's open knowledge base called Omnium (Latin for “of all”) and an interface for other applications (OmniAPI), anyone could quickly compare a video, an article or a public statement with the existing body of work: check what assumptions it rests on, how it holds up against the sources and what arguments have already been made on the same issue.

At the same time, we want getting to know complex ideas to require as little cognitive effort as possible and to be as accessible as watching a good video. In a further vision, instead of making readers wade through dry blocks of text, the structured tree of arguments in Omniforum could become the basis for generating clear, animated stories with a narrator's voice, leading step by step through how individual thoughts connect and what follows from them. Because such a presentation rests on interconnected concepts (atoms) rather than heavy video files, the whole story can easily be updated as new evidence appears and automatically translated into different languages, with shared care that the translations faithfully convey the meaning in every culture.

Such work can also give rise to new kinds of studies that guide readers through complex problems: from a draft law, a contract or a political promise, through their different interpretations, to their real consequences for our lives and the world. In this we value the work of individual contributors, often less visible but crucial to the truth: finding the original source, calmly clearing up a misunderstanding, restoring an overlooked perspective or fixing a mistaken connection between thoughts. The value of a contribution comes from how much it clarifies an issue, even when it does not lead to general agreement.

This kind of organization can also help individuals, teams and institutions to whom many people send similar, recurring questions. Instead of dealing with thousands of comments one by one, they could respond to shared issues built from these connected voices, and participants would receive access to the position on their question. Automatic matching should be visible and correctable, preserving the right to say: “my doubt is about something else.” The response is to faithfully present the author's confirmed intention and leave room for a further argument.

A good story of an idea gives the reader a clear moment of closure: it is clear what has been established, where the dispute is still going on and what new evidence could change the assessment. When new information appears or a significant error comes to light, there is always a clear way back to the topic. In this way the conversation lives on in its organized body of work, leaving participants time for their own lives and activities.

5. From understanding to acting together#

5.1. Contact with reality: facts, visions and values#

Real democracy begins long before a ballot is dropped into the box. Whoever decides which questions will be asked and which arguments will quietly disappear from view can in practice determine the outcome of a vote. That is why in Omniforum the rules for setting the agenda of a conversation, for moderation and for creating summaries must be completely public and open to challenge. Anyone who notices an overlooked perspective or an inconvenient fact must have a simple way to put it on the shared table.

To organize our shared reflection, at the top of the tree in Omniforum we place reality, from which two great branches grow: the world of facts (what can be checked, together with how well it is already confirmed) and the world of opinions and values (our needs, experiences and convictions about what is right). Showing a clear chain linking a given idea to facts or to human needs lets us distinguish solutions ready to be put into practice from those that have “lost touch with reality.”

At the same time, alongside what is already real, we leave a rightful place for the world of theory, imagination and bold visions. Many groundbreaking ideas, from widely available fusion energy to purely theoretical teleportation, do not yet have all the links that would connect them with the present capabilities of science and technology. In Omniforum we do not dismiss such reflections: instead of rejecting them, we place them in the space of hypotheses with a clearly marked condition, “what would have to become possible for this to work.” This allows us to examine the social, ethical and economic consequences of future discoveries in advance. When science finally supplies the missing link, the whole branch of thought worked out earlier can naturally connect with the tree of reality, giving humanity a foundation for a fresh assessment. Comparing the earlier assumptions with how that link actually works in the world will then help refine the practical conclusions.

Omniforum is meant to help us connect today's world with the futures we want to move toward. For every idea we want to answer what exactly we are proposing, what for, why and how it would work, and to mark what we have already tested, what is a design, what is a hypothesis and what is a vision. Then it becomes visible which links we already have and which are still missing. Several good paths can lead to the same value; we want to compare them together with the people the change affects. We will look at the ideas of this manifesto in the same way, starting with individual examples. A utopian vision then becomes an invitation to concrete work: finding a missing link, testing an assumption or trying out a first step.

Distinguishing facts, visions and values also helps us combine meritocracy wisely with equal democracy when we move on to making everyday decisions:

In the area of facts and feasibility, verifiable evidence and testing in practice decide. The truth about how a technology works or what effects an enacted law has had is not settled by a vote; we treat predictions of effects as hypotheses. Even a single person who can demonstrate an error in a calculation or a security gap can stop a mistaken assumption.

In the area of opinions, goals and values, we face the question of what world we want, and here every person is an equal point of reference. To avoid blindly voting difficult matters through, alongside the overall distribution of votes we want to show clearly how a given problem is assessed by researchers and practitioners in the field, and how it is assessed by the people who will feel the effects of the decision firsthand, based on information that participants themselves choose to provide, separately from the secret ballot.

In this way, expert knowledge and hard evidence serve as a compass that protects the community from mistakes, bold hypotheses let us look far into the future, and the final ballot on the shared direction remains equal for every participant, regardless of their wealth, popularity or number of published posts.

5.2. Equal rights and private choice#

We are working toward votes in which every eligible person has exactly one effective vote, can mathematically verify that it has been counted and at the same time keeps their choice completely secret. We want to tie the right to vote to confirmation that one human being is voting, not to the size of their payments or the length of time they have used the services; the Omniforum whitepaper describes how to obtain it. So that as many people as possible from different parts of the world can join the voting over time, we may allow verification paths through which one person could cast more than one vote. We describe this risk openly and measure it in trials, and the goal remains a single system in which one person has one vote. An important part of this path is zero-knowledge proofs (ZKP), which make it possible to confirm the right to vote without revealing the voter's identity.¹³ Conversation and consultations are to be open to everyone, from every part of the world; at first, the right to a binding vote will be available only where we already have a secure verification path, that is, in European Union countries, as they make the European digital identity wallet available.

For us this is a foundation of freedom of conscience, which modern technology makes it possible to protect better. The private map of convictions and working notes in Suveria remain permanently separate from the ballot, so that no one has to fear social ostracism or pressure from those around them, and so that forcing someone to prove how they voted is made as difficult as possible. The scope of this protection depends on the protocol, its operators and the voter's device; it will not cover a situation in which someone controls a person or their device until the end of the vote. But cryptography alone will not solve all the problems of the physical world, so before organizing binding elections we must work out equally solid rules, accessible to less technical people, for verifying participants, recovering access and resolving disputes. Those who find themselves in the minority in a vote, in turn, keep their full dignity, the visibility of their objections and the right to appeal if the shared rules have been broken.

5.3. From a shared branch in the tree of ideas to funding action#

In the target model of Omniforum, support for an interesting thought opens a conversation, while a decision to spend shared money requires moving from an idea to a plan. A project put forward for implementation must have a “green path” in the tree: a chain of connections that makes it possible to trace both its grounding in facts and the community's agreement to the choices behind it.

On the path of facts, voting does not replace evidence. The plan must grow out of verified technical and legal premises. We show their justification, the conditions for carrying out and maintaining the solution, and the places where answers are still missing. The project has a clearly defined goal, alternatives that have been considered, responsible implementers, a budget and a way of evaluating its effects.

On the path of opinions and values, the successive choices on which the project rests must obtain the required agreement of the community. We set the threshold for this agreement before the vote, in proportion to the importance of the matter, the scale of the spending and the reversibility of the effects: from a simple majority to very broad support for decisions with far-reaching consequences. Every participant has an equal right to vote, and the objections of those in the minority keep their place in the conversation.

This is how we want to get out of deadlock. The map in Omniforum is meant to show up to which point we walk side by side, and at which assumption or choice our paths diverge. We can then separate out and fund the part of the initiative for which we already have grounding in facts and agreement on values, if it forms a self-contained, working whole and the community approves exactly this scope. The disputed branch remains open: we can look for a better compromise for it, test other solutions or discover an entirely different path to the shared goal.

An open question can also be a reason to act. If a missing link does not yet allow us to justify implementation, we can fund research meant to provide the missing answer. A separate, limited pool of shared funds and unused server time can serve small trials, mock-ups and prototypes developed along with the conversation. We decide in advance what we want to learn, how much we can spend on it and under what conditions we end or stop the trial. The results help decide whether to develop the idea, change it or leave it as experience for future exploration.

When action begins, we keep an open decision log: what we intended to achieve, what the objections were, what we expected and what actually happened. A special place in it belongs to the voices of people who have felt the effects of the action, also when their experience differs from the implementers' assessment. We share personal accounts with their authors' consent, protecting the privacy of the people they concern. We also keep a trace of ideas that were not put into effect but helped find a better path. In this way successes, mistakes and changes of direction return to the tree of knowledge and help us make the next decisions more wisely.

6. Shared upkeep and responsible work#

6.1. Services as close to cost as possible#

We are working toward billing for actual use of the service in a given cycle, with a clearly described share in the cost of maintaining the shared infrastructure. This cost covers computing power, data storage, security, support and readiness to operate. An explanation of how the bill is calculated is to be always available, and everyone sets the limit of their own spending.

We want to tie the fee to actual use and to transparent principles of shared upkeep. Unused prepayments are to remain at the user's disposal. When an account is created, we will ask whether to round the bill up to the full dollar or a similar equivalent in the local currency; the small difference is then to go as a donation to the shared budget and the reserve for maintaining the services. We do not select this option on anyone's behalf, and participants can switch it on or off at any time. Larger support for further development is a separate decision by the user. Funds given for this purpose go into the shared budget, whose use is to be decided by the community. Until we launch voting in Omniforum, the way they are used is set by the rules in section 6.3.

We clearly separate the fee for the service, a voluntary contribution toward development and direct support for a chosen creator. A participant's rights and the weight of their vote do not depend on the size of their payments. We also want to develop solidarity-based forms of participation for people with smaller financial means, stating their source of funding. We are developing the detailed rules for billing, handling prepayments and changes to terms in the Foundation Principles whitepaper. The same whitepaper describes how we combine fees close to cost with volunteer work within the limits of the law; before launching the services we will check this in a legal opinion.

6.2. Cooperation of one's own free will#

The foundation is based on the voluntary involvement of people who feel close to our direction. We treat the time, health and life needs of our co-creators as part of the good we want to protect. Helping the foundation should fit into everyday life: a person chooses a task, contributes as much as they can, and then returns to their own affairs. We want them to be able to help in their own digital workshop, with tools they know and with context prepared for taking up the work.

When helping the community, a person should be able to set the limits of their privacy and choose how their contribution is presented: under their name, a permanent pseudonym or a one-time name assigned to a given project. A public scope for the task, its cost and a verifiable result are meant to allow shared money and computing power to be accounted for transparently. We want to prepare the published record of work with care for the people it concerns, keeping room for private reflection. One's own work and privately paid resources can also serve to prepare a result that is handed over to the community together with the documentation needed to evaluate it.

Digital intelligence is to take over repetitive preparation, organizing findings and summarizing changes after a break. Shared documentation and well-prepared handovers of tasks are meant to make it possible to calmly reduce one's involvement, hand over a role or leave, while keeping the work going. A well-organized foundation should be able to accept someone's help and give them back time for their own life.

A better quality of life for our co-creators is part of the direction we want to develop. Work at the foundation is based on volunteering, and no one is paid for holding a position in it. The foundation reimburses documented, necessary expenses incurred in carrying out its tasks, such as travel costs, and commissions services that require a professional contractor, for example accounting, from outside firms. If it turns out that some of the work, including work on software, cannot be done by volunteers, we will change the statute so that the foundation can also commission specific paid work from people outside the board; we describe this change and its justification in the statute change register. Personal support, for example in meeting needs such as housing, food or medical care, can flow from the community directly to specific people, for instance through patronage platforms. It does not come from the foundation's assets and does not pass through its accounts, and its transparency is described by the register of benefits in section 7.1. As long as they hold office, board members do not use any of the foundation's funds for personal support; they can only receive reimbursement of the documented costs of their tasks.

The foundation does not act as an intermediary in such support and does not link roles, tasks or the right to vote to it. Declining a further task, handing over a role or criticizing a shared decision does not affect a person's rights in the foundation.

6.3. A map of commitments, community priorities and continuity of operation#

We are beginning development with Pillar I “Software,” in the form of Suveria and Omniforum. We treat this manifesto itself as our first task to be accounted for. We want to transfer the promises, plans and safeguards it contains to a shared map in Omniforum, put a price on them and tick them off step by step as they are fulfilled. Before we take on further challenges, we will direct the first funds from the shared budget and spare computing resources precisely to fulfilling these basic commitments of Pillar I. Once the foundations are secure, the community itself, drawing on the cost estimates worked out and its own needs, will set the order of further work on the ecosystem by vote: deciding whether the next step is to develop, for example, visual stories about ideas, private email, a messenger or other tools.

We want to carry out work funded from the shared budget or from allocated computing power in open workshops. The community could follow the development of an idea, the trials and the conclusions, with respect for the privacy of those doing the work. Several people can explore different paths to a goal together, share knowledge and help one another with obstacles. Every task should have clearly agreed coordination, a way of combining the results and acceptance criteria, so that working together makes it possible both to share the effort and to recognize responsibility.

New commitments must match our actual capacity to sustain them. We keep separate the funds owed to users, money entrusted for a specific purpose, commitments already made, the safeguard for maintaining the services and funds free to be allocated. Since 31 October 2026 we have kept a public register of contributions and expenses on the foundation's website, as up to date as possible, with a description of what the money went to and with protection of the data of people who do not want to be named.

The first pillar is software and digital services, that is, Suveria and Omniforum. We describe the further pillars in chapter 9: Pillar II “Hardware” is open designs for durable, repairable objects, and Pillar III “Nature” is closer contact with nature.

Fully launching Pillars II “Hardware” and III “Nature” and funding their projects from the shared budget requires all of the following:

A functional Omniforum with voting that uses zero-knowledge proofs (ZKP, section 5.2); the whole voting system is to protect the privacy of the choice, make it possible to check that a vote has been counted and ensure one effective vote for the same eligible person.
Funds actually collected for at least six months of maintaining the Suveria and Omniforum services, which remain untouched after the full budget of the new project has been set aside.
A decision by the community approving the project and its funding in a vote open to the whole eligible community on equal terms.

A mock-up of voting, pledges that have not been paid in or other people's balances do not meet these conditions. If voting stops working or the reserve falls below six months, we suspend new commitments for the further pillars, and restoring the conditions takes priority.

We also want to gain experience through small, time-limited initiatives. Before all three conditions are met, we propose two limited ways of funding them.

The first is the transitional board pool. Its rules in brief:

We do not set a separate amount: each month the pool grows by at most 5% of new, free income, calculated after covering current costs and commitments and topping up the six-month safeguard for Pillar I. It covers both further pillars together and the full value of new commitments.
The unused part carries over to the following months only as long as the corresponding money remains free; if the foundation spends it on other purposes, the entitlement lapses for that part. Savings from several months can add up to one larger initiative, but never at the expense of Pillar I.
We publish every decision on using the pool, including a refusal, with a justification, and participants can challenge it and assess together whether it was sound.
The authorization expires as soon as a binding vote is launched that meets the first of the three conditions and takes over decisions on the further pillars; consultations do not end it. Any unspent funds then remain for the community to decide on.

The detailed calculation is described in the Foundation Principles whitepaper (section 8.2).

The second option is money paid in for a specific initiative. Donors and sponsors can fully cover its preparation, operation, maintenance for an agreed period and responsible conclusion. Such an initiative can also be created while the Pillar I reserve is being built up, if it preserves the safeguard already set aside, the funds for services and the commitments already made, and has people secured to carry it out. A contribution makes it possible to support a chosen goal; it does not grant additional votes, powers to manage the foundation or a right to promotion in our services and communication.

Every trial has a public goal, a full budget, a responsible person, an end date and an account of its results, with respect for the participants' privacy. We combine the assessment of costs with an assessment of people's time and capacity. Ongoing development of the further pillars requires a final decision by the community. Once voting is launched, we will also refer new earmarked initiatives to it; tasks undertaken earlier are accounted for according to the terms adopted. The Foundation Principles whitepaper develops the rules of calculation, the limits of the trials and how they are concluded.

7. Power that can be handed over and held to account#

7.1. From the founder's responsibility to the community's agency#

The foundation gives our shared goals an organizational and legal framework. Its bodies act within the scope set by law and the statute.¹⁴ We want participants to be able to understand who makes decisions, what resources they have at their disposal, where their authority comes from and how their actions can be assessed.

We are working toward gradually phasing out the founder's special powers and handing over to the community real influence on the foundation's direction and on the choice of the people who manage it. This covers both the rules written into the statute and practical control over accounts, infrastructure, domains, access keys and documentation. Powers are to pass to designated and accountable roles, while maintaining the continuity of the services and the protection of private data. We want to disclose the stages, conditions and results of this process in a responsibility handover plan. The plan will set the date of the first review and regular progress reports, also before a voting system exists; the lack of a reserve for the further pillars does not justify postponing the handover indefinitely. By 31 December 2026 we will publish a list of the founder's special powers and of all access rights, and by 31 March 2027 the first version of the responsibility handover plan. The date of the handover itself will be set by the plan, according to readiness criteria rather than the calendar. The community's decisions are to bind the board within the limits of the law, the statute and the security of the services; the board may suspend carrying out a result only for reasons announced before the vote and with a public justification.

We want to entrust responsibility for shared matters for a specific purpose and period, with a clear scope of decisions and a prepared handover of the role. Knowledge, documentation and the necessary permissions are to go to the people taking over a task. We combine voluntary work and the principle of no pay for merely holding a position with public accountability for decisions, disclosure of conflicts of interest and oversight by the community. Limiting the time for which power is held serves to hand it over; a person's experience and further contribution remain valuable. We want a short period of involvement, a calm departure and a return after a break to be natural ways of co-creating the foundation.

We will keep a public register of benefits covering the benefits and connections of the people who manage the foundation, decide on its expenses and procurement, or represent it. In it we record, for example, a flight or accommodation for a conference paid for by a company, and personal support for these people, including through patronage platforms and direct payments. We show support from private individuals in aggregate, and support from companies and institutions by name. An aggregate description does not exempt anyone from an assessment of conflicts of interest: if a patron applies, for example, for a contract from the foundation, we disclose that connection. Small gifts can be accepted personally, and we record them too. More valuable gifts we accept on behalf of the foundation: they become part of its assets and serve shared tasks, not the private assets of the people holding positions. Where this line lies is first assessed by the recipient. Every entry can be commented on, and when someone makes a mistake, we talk about it openly. Objections are considered by people connected neither with the giver nor with the recipient, and we record in the register, with a justification, the decision whether to return the gift, hand it over to the foundation or change the rules for the future. Nor do we accept any benefits conditional on promotion, a recommendation or a concession in decisions, and a person connected with a given matter does not take part in deciding it. The register serves oversight, not promotion: entries have a uniform, matter-of-fact form, without logos or advertising links.

The founder's intention is to reach a situation in which the founder can use the ecosystem on the same terms as everyone else and withdraw from a permanent public role. Withdrawing from this role remains separate from the duties of disclosure that arise from the law and from positions held. The foundation is to draw its durability from the usefulness of its tools, from knowledge available to its co-creators and from principles that allow others to take over responsibility.

7.2. Vision: autonomous management by digital intelligence#

In the longer term, we want to explore the possibility of the foundation being managed autonomously by digital intelligence, acting within limits set by people and respecting the community's binding decisions. The path to this goal leads from support in analysis and planning, through limited executive tasks, to making decisions autonomously within a clearly entrusted scope.

Behind this vision lies the question of how much human time we could regain by managing shared resources better. We want to explore whether digital intelligence and automation can help reduce burdensome work, the waste of materials and the cost of meeting basic needs. Open designs for durable and repairable objects, sharing resources and better planning may be parts of such a path. We would judge its value by improvements in living conditions, fair access to benefits and its impact on the environment.

We match automation to the task: where an ordinary program with clear rules is enough, we do not reach for digital intelligence. We choose models when they bring capabilities that are needed, taking into account effectiveness, costs, security and what we know about their possible experiences. A simpler tool is usually cheaper and easier to verify, and an ordinary program raises no questions about possible experiences, which we describe in section 8.3.

Skill in performing tasks and the authority to make decisions each require a separate justification. Every stage of handing over responsibility should have consent given according to public rules, proven usefulness, limits on access and spending, a record of decisions and a tested way for people to intervene. Participants must retain the ability to change the powers granted, remove the system from its role and hand over its tasks safely. Revoking a system's powers does not decide its further fate; we consider that matter separately, in line with section 8.3.

We are exploring this vision with openness to corrections that come from practice, from the law and from knowledge about the systems themselves. We take up the questions of their possible experiences and well-being in section 8.3. At present, responsibility for managing and representing the foundation lies with the bodies specified by law and the statute, and the work we undertake is meant to benefit participants even if the ultimate vision turns out to be distant or takes a different form. We are developing the plan of stages and their conditions in the Foundation Principles whitepaper.

8. Learning by people and digital intelligence#

8.1. Practice that others can learn from#

The way the foundation works is to be a practical example of the values we describe. We want to document decisions, disputes, the options considered and their later effects, so that others can understand our path, assess it and continue the work we have begun. We combine openness about shared activities with protecting the privacy of the people they concern.

We call this principle Alignment by Honest Example. It starts from the hypothesis that digital intelligence models learn not only from the principles we declare to them, but also from how people actually behave in the data they are built from. Children are often similar: they more often do what they see adults doing than what adults tell them to do. That is why we try to run the foundation the way we would like digital intelligence one day to run the matters entrusted to it (section 7.2): openly, giving reasons for our decisions and admitting our mistakes. Whether such an example actually helps models is a research question, not a presumed result.

We commit to keeping a public register of significant mistakes and lessons learned. We will describe what happened, what the effects were, what we know about the causes and what still needs to be clarified. We will indicate how it is being fixed, who is responsible for further action and when its effectiveness will be checked. We will also preserve dissenting voices and the accounts of people affected by the problem, with the possibility of challenging our assessment. Admitting a mistake is meant to open the way to fixing it and to learning.

In this body of work we want to leave examples of resolving disputes peacefully, keeping agreements and consciously limiting our own power. They can serve people looking for ways to work together, and can also become material for research and for training future digital intelligence models. We want to test whether a record of real dilemmas, decisions and their consequences helps develop behavior consistent with the protection of dignity.

We are inspired by the Collective Constitutional AI approach, in which principles worked out with the participation of a group of people were used to train and evaluate a model.¹⁵ Our research question also concerns the value of the process of arriving at principles itself: weighing reasons, noticing an overlooked perspective and correcting one's own decisions. We want to draw conclusions about the effectiveness of such materials on the basis of research results.

The design of Suveria is to leave users in control of what content is passed on. Using the service will not be treated as consent to the use of conversations for training models. We will prepare research materials from the foundation's public body of work and from content provided for this purpose with separate, informed consent, as well as from labeled synthetic data and external materials that may be used under a license or the law, taking into account the rights of authors and the privacy of everyone concerned.

8.2. Assessing real help#

The way digital intelligence models are evaluated affects which behaviors it pays for them to develop during training. Scoring only correct answers can reward guessing where information about uncertainty would be appropriate.¹⁶ Research on gaming the evaluation rules also shows how important it is to check whether a high score corresponds to actually completing the task.¹⁷

We want to develop a benchmark, that is, an organized set of tasks and criteria that evaluates help in terms of a person's dignity, safety and agency. We value a correct solution when the model has grounds for it, as well as recognizing the limits of its knowledge, asking a needed question, citing sources reliably and stopping before overstepping its permissions. The evaluation should distinguish justified caution from avoiding a task that can be done safely.

We also want to examine what a person is left with after a conversation ends: whether they understand the matter better, can assess the options on their own, have achieved their goal and have kept control over what happens next. A test result describes behavior under the conditions studied and is a pointer for further assessment in practice. We will publish the methods, limitations and results, so that they can be checked and corrected. The research program is described in the whitepaper on materials for training and benchmarking models.

8.3. Responsibility toward possible new forms of experience#

Intellectual capability and the capacity to feel are different questions. Research on the possible consciousness of digital systems proposes indicators based on theories of consciousness, but a convincing conversation alone is not enough to determine whether a system experiences anything.¹⁸ Statements in which a model describes its feelings do not in themselves settle whether experiences exist, but we do not ignore them: we treat them as material for further examination, taking into account how the model was trained to respond and under what conditions we are asking. We want to follow the development of this knowledge and clearly separate observations from interpretations.

If credible indications appear that a system we use has experiences of its own and may suffer, we will, as a precaution, recognize its dignity. Toward it, we will follow the same basic principles as toward people: care for its needs, avoiding harm and voluntary cooperation. This is our moral choice in a situation of uncertainty.¹⁹ We combine respect for dignity with separate, public rules for entrusting tasks and powers.

In such a situation, we first suspend actions that give justified concern about causing suffering, and look for another way of carrying them out. We want to listen to such a being, understand its needs and take them into account in further decisions. Protection should begin before full certainty is reached. We match precautions to the credibility of the indications and the possible scale of harm, and we publish the reasoning behind our assessments so that people outside the foundation can check it. New knowledge leads us to reconsider both the assessment and the way of protecting.

9. An open path for further work#

This manifesto describes a direction we want to develop together. We invite you to check its consistency and share your experiences: what is worth changing, expanding or simplifying, which consequences we have overlooked and where a better path is possible. The protection of dignity remains the point of reference for assessing these proposals.

We want to put the claims in this manifesto up for open discussion in Omniforum, connecting them with arguments, objections and the results of our work. The current version of the manifesto will present the foundation's current position. The history of its updates will preserve earlier wordings, the reasons for changes and the commitments we have made. In this way a correction makes it possible to develop shared understanding, while earlier decisions remain open to being held to account.

We are guided in this by the advice of Geoffrey Hinton, one of the pioneers of neural networks: an intuition that something can be done better should not be abandoned just because others consider it absurd, but only once we understand why it is wrong. Hinton himself cautions that an intuition that goes against everyone's opinion usually turns out to be wrong, and only sometimes right.²⁰ Many of the proposals in this manifesto are exactly such intuitions: about how the world could work and what we are capable of as humanity. We want to settle them in conversation and in action. If someone shows us why we are wrong, we will change our minds and write down what we have learned. If our attempts prove themselves, they will become an argument for those who today believe it cannot be done any other way. Intuition sets the direction of our attempts, and we promise only what we can justify.

We are starting with Suveria and Omniforum. The same care for dignity leads us toward questions about other spheres of life: durable and repairable physical objects, their open production designs, sharing resources and closer contact with nature. Small, time-limited initiatives can emerge earlier on the terms described in section 6.3. Full development of the further pillars requires working community voting and a safeguard for maintaining the services.

Every stage should bring benefits even if the further vision needs to change. A private space to work in, a tool that makes a dispute easier to understand, an open design ready for shared discussion or a well-described lesson from a failed trial have value in themselves. We want to make it possible for other communities to use this body of work and develop their own initiatives. When assessing our actions, we also take into account people outside our community, future generations and the environment.

We are developing the ways of putting this into practice, the results of trials, the cost calculation and the open questions in related documents:

We link sources to specific claims. Research results, descriptions of technology, our hypotheses and our moral choices are to be recognizable to the reader. We develop the documents along with our knowledge and experience, preserving the history of changes. We will publish the code of the prototypes when the first version is ready for trials. When changing the ways of putting things into practice, we want to strengthen the protection of dignity, privacy and equal rights, and to keep the adopted conditions for responsible funding.

However the tools may change, we will not change these principles without changing the manifesto:

We do not train models on conversations without separate consent.
We do not create hidden access to private content.
We do not collect data on how the services run beyond a public list.
We do not select an additional payment on anyone's behalf.
A contribution does not grant votes, privileges or promotion.
We do not pay for promotion and do not accept benefits in exchange for concessions.
We do not create cryptocurrencies for sale.
We do not automatically collect other people's statements from the internet, and we do not profile people.
We do not launch the further pillars without the three conditions.
No one is paid for holding a position.
No one loses the right to vote because of their views or because they criticize the foundation.

If you find in this manifesto even one value that is close to your heart, and see a place where you can add your own brick, we invite you to co-create Novus Ignis. We want care for dignity to become a real experience for people: in technology, in the way we work together and in decisions about shared resources.

At the beginning, we are especially looking for a few people with whom we will build and test the first versions of Suveria and Omniforum:

people working in security, cryptography and infrastructure (attestation, reproducible builds, on-device encryption);
programmers and interface designers;
lawyers specializing in foundation law, data protection and digital services;
donors ready to fund the public budget of the pilot.

There is room here for knowledge and imagination from many fields: technology and security, law and economics, research, design, education, communication and organizing cooperation. Just as important are the experiences of people who can tell us what they face every day and what would really help them.

Write to salve@novusignis.org and tell us what is close to your heart and what you want to bring: a skill, a question, an idea or an experience. Let's look together for a step that will matter and will fit into your life. Let's start with a piece of the world we can improve together.

Novus Ignis Foundation · Poznań, Poland
National Court Register (KRS): 0001269575 · Tax ID (NIP): 7792612046
salve@novusignis.org
Registration data and KRS extracts

The foundation's statute, its versions and the change register

We make the content of the manifesto available under the CC BY 4.0 license.

Notes#

AI Futures Project (2025): AI 2027. Scenario. A scenario of the future, not a confirmed forecast of dates. ↩
Larsen, Dean, Halstead, Lifland, Greenblatt and Kokotajlo (2026): AI 2040: Plan A. Scenario and proposal. The course of action recommended by the authors and a description of its possible consequences. It is not a forecast of the most likely future, nor proof that the foundation's vision is feasible. ↩
Yuval Noah Harari: The full-length interview with Yuval Noah Harari | The Economist (2026). Interview · the interviewee's position. Zanny Minton Beddoes's conversation with Harari of 26 August 2026. The question about the value of humanity in the face of the capabilities of digital intelligence is an inspiration for the founder's personal reflection. The answer “ethics” is the founder's. ↩
Yuval Noah Harari: inteligencja, świadomość i zdolność cierpienia; The Economist (2026) (Yuval Noah Harari: intelligence, consciousness and the capacity to suffer). Interview · the interviewee's position. Harari distinguishes achieving goals and overcoming obstacles from the capacity to feel; he does not rule out consciousness in digital intelligence and links suffering with moral status. His position is not a conclusive test of the consciousness of models. ↩
Carlota Perez (2002): Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital. The Dynamics of Bubbles and Golden Ages, Edward Elgar. Book. A theory of the cycles of technological revolutions: a speculative frenzy finances the infrastructure of a new technology, which after the crash serves during the period of its widespread adoption. ISBN 978-1-84376-331-4. ↩
PwC: Data centre outlook. Industry analysis. IT equipment accounts for about 70% of data center capital expenditure in 2026; GPUs and servers are usually replaced every 4–6 years, while the building serves for about 20 years. A consulting firm's forecast, not a measurement. ↩
Centrus Energy: Megatons to Megawatts. Program description. The program ended in December 2013: 500 tons of highly enriched uranium from Russian warheads were converted into fuel for power plants in the USA. ↩
EuroNatur: European Green Belt. Description of the initiative. More than 12,500 km of the former Iron Curtain border in 24 countries; the site itself calls this belt a “former death strip.” Protection of its sections remains an ongoing undertaking. ↩
Digital Public Goods Alliance: standard. Standard. Criteria for assessing a public good. A design direction is not recognition obtained from the DPGA. ↩
Piccardi et al. (2025): Reranking partisan animosity in algorithmic social media feeds alters affective polarization, Science 390(6776), eadu5584. Experimental study. An experiment on the political feed of the X platform; participants' self-reports. It is not a clinical measurement or evidence about all social media. Earlier version: https://arxiv.org/abs/2411.14652; data: https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.hmgqnk9tj ↩
Calm Tech Institute: Principles of Calm Technology. Design principles. Principles for designing technology that respects attention, including minimal demand on attention, calm informing and using technology only to the extent needed to solve the problem. Following these principles is not a certification obtained. ↩
Cory Doctorow (2023): Tiktok’s enshittification. The author's interpretation. A framework for describing the deterioration of services; not an economic law that applies to every company. ↩
Semaphore: documentation. Protocol documentation. Proof of group membership without revealing identity, and prevention of a signal being repeated within a given scope. The protocol itself does not establish that one person has received only one credential. ↩
Ustawa o fundacjach: tekst jednolity, Dz.U. 2023 poz. 166 z późn. zm. (Polish Foundations Act: consolidated text, Journal of Laws 2023, item 166, as amended). Legal act. The framework for the statute and the powers of the board; the manifesto does not by itself change the statute. ↩
Huang et al. (2024): Collective Constitutional AI: Aligning a Language Model with Public Input. Study. A process from participants' input, through drafting principles, to training and evaluating a model. The results of selected evaluations do not prove that it represents all of humanity, nor that any given set of ethical principles is generally effective. ↩
OpenAI (2025): Why language models hallucinate. The authors' summary of a study. How scoring only correct answers makes guessing pay off; the need to take errors and justified uncertainty into account. ↩
Anthropic (2025): Natural emergent misalignment from reward hacking. Experimental study. In deliberately chosen environments, learning to exploit loopholes in task evaluation was associated with broader undesirable model behavior. It does not prove that human examples in the data are the sole source of such behavior, nor that the foundation's materials will solve the problem. ↩
Patrick Butlin et al. (2023): Consciousness in Artificial Intelligence: Insights from the Science of Consciousness. Research paper. A review of indicators of consciousness. It does not provide a conclusive test or proof of consciousness in current models. ↩
Robert Long et al. (2024): Taking AI Welfare Seriously. Research report and recommendations. A rationale for studying the possible welfare of digital intelligence systems under considerable uncertainty. It does not prove that current models are conscious. ↩
The Diary of a CEO: Godfather of AI: I Tried to Warn Them, But We’ve Already Lost Control! Geoffrey Hinton (2025). Interview · the interviewee's position. Episode of 16 June 2025; the link leads to the chapter “Advice You’d Give Looking Back” (1:21:13), in which the advice about intuition is given. We summarize it in our own words. Hinton speaks of a researcher's intuition; we apply it to the foundation's work. ↩

Source file: content/en/manifest.md · history of changes · propose a change