Compare two futures
Who governs, who benefits, and which terms remain open?
Compare any two entries. Their differences are editorial descriptions, not distances on a common scale.
Life and institutions
Everyday institutions may persist, but research ambitions encounter an authority able to say that a capability must never exist. That boundary shapes what people can build.
Research continues within negotiated boundaries. Citizens can contest the restrictions, but inspections impose costs and some promising projects remain unavailable.
Practical authority
The gatekeeper has final power over successor intelligence; humans govern other matters within that constraint.
Human institutions with genuinely revisable mandates.
Benefits and costs
An attempt to limit dangerous successor systems with a restricted mission. A permanent veto constrains future generations and technological possibilities.
Risk constraints that can be publicly reconsidered. Inspections, foregone capabilities and incentives to defect.
Practical human governing authorityExplicit difference
Humans do not retain practical final authority
Project editorial inference. The gatekeeper has an overriding veto over successor intelligence, so human authority is not final in that domain.
Humans retain practical final authority
Additional project hypothetical. Human institutions retain authority in this authored arrangement.
Revisable governing mandatesExplicit difference
Governing mandates cannot be effectively revised
Project editorial inference. The project reads the permanent gatekeeping mission as a veto future humans cannot revoke.
People can effectively revise governing mandates
Additional project hypothetical. Citizens can actually contest and revise the restrictions under the authored premise.
A practical right to leave
The scenario leaves this condition unspecified
Unresolved. The scenario does not say whether people have a usable right to leave.
The scenario leaves this condition unspecified
Unresolved. The scenario does not say whether people have a usable right to leave.
Several self-governing communitiesDifferent or incomplete terms
The scenario leaves this condition unspecified
Unresolved. The scenario does not say whether several communities govern themselves.
Depends on the variant; no single answer
Unresolved. The limits may operate across independent polities or within one common authority.
A guaranteed material floor
The scenario leaves this condition unspecified
Unresolved. The scenario does not say whether everyone receives a guaranteed material floor.
The scenario leaves this condition unspecified
Unresolved. The scenario does not say whether everyone receives a guaranteed material floor.
Private ownership of productive resourcesDifferent or incomplete terms
The scenario leaves this condition unspecified
Unresolved. The scenario does not say whether private ownership organizes productive resources.
Depends on the variant; no single answer
Unresolved. The economic settlement may use private or common productive ownership.
Continuing biological humanity
Biological humanity continues
Linked source premise. The linked Gatekeeper premise retains humans with useful subordinate technologies.
Biological humanity continues
Additional project hypothetical. Biological humanity continues in the authored world.
Others’ choice to transform themselves
Depends on the variant; no single answer
Unresolved. Some augmentation exists; the terms do not settle freedom to choose substantial transformation.
Depends on the variant; no single answer
Unresolved. Transformation rules depend on the settlement; neither permission nor prohibition is guaranteed.
Standing for artificial persons
The scenario leaves this condition unspecified
Unresolved. The scenario does not say whether artificial persons have institutional standing.
The scenario leaves this condition unspecified
Unresolved. The scenario does not say whether artificial persons have institutional standing.
Enforced limits on selected capabilities
Selected capabilities face enforced limits
Linked source premise. The linked premise uses a superintelligence to prevent another superintelligence from being created.
Selected capabilities face enforced limits
Additional project hypothetical. Selected dangerous capabilities face enforced institutional limits.
Visible exercise of governing powerDifferent or incomplete terms
The scenario leaves this condition unspecified
Unresolved. The scenario does not say whether people know who exercises governing power.
People know who exercises governing power
Additional project hypothetical. The authored restrictions and authority to impose them are public.
Practical independence from a technical providerDifferent or incomplete terms
The scenario leaves this condition unspecified
Unresolved. The scenario does not say whether communities can operate without an indispensable technical provider.
Depends on the variant; no single answer
Unresolved. Infrastructure may offer practical alternatives or create an indispensable provider; the settlement does not fix this.
Open questions
Monitoring scope, practical exit and how the mandate could be contested.
The boundary of restricted research, distribution and cross-border enforcement.
These are authored descriptors. An unresolved feature is not evidence of a guarantee, a conflict or equivalence. Consult Gatekeeper sources or Negotiated Ceiling sources.