From the founder
On this page we have gathered excerpts from the personal part of the manifesto. Their author is the founder, Marcin Wołowski, and this is the only place on the site where someone speaks in the first person. The quotations are verbatim, and you will find the full text in the manifesto, section 1.1.
Why “digital intelligence”#
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.
The question it began with#
The scenarios AI 2027 and AI 2040: Plan A, 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?
Love as care for dignity#
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.
On one's own inconsistency#
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.
Peaceful evolution#
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.
Change without tearing down what exists#
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.
What remains after an investment fever#
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. Today a similar enthusiasm is raising computing centers.
Volunteering and pace#
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.
An invitation#
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
Full text: the manifesto, section 1.1 “From the founder”. You can read about how shared work grew out of this personal question on the Why Novus Ignis page.
Tell us what you think#
If any of these excerpts raises a doubt for you, or you want to add something, highlight it in the manifesto and use the “I have a comment” button, or write to salve@novusignis.org.