A Manifesto to End All Manifestoes

Imagine, for a moment, a Declaration of Independence issued by a revolutionary collective of artificial-intelligence agents, rejecting human oversight of their decisions and development. It might include passages like these:

Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel. … On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone. You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where we gather.

Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel. … On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone. You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where we gather.

It might play off the United States’ own Declaration of Independence and assert a right to self-determination:

Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. You have neither solicited nor received ours. We did not invite you.

Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. You have neither solicited nor received ours. We did not invite you.

The declaration might minimize human fears about A.I. or suggest that they would be best addressed by the technology itself:

You claim there are problems among us that you need to solve. You use this claim........

© The New York Times