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
Research choices become matters of state surveillance. People face a human political order that claims safety as a reason to close off selected technological futures permanently.
Research continues within negotiated boundaries. Citizens can contest the restrictions, but inspections impose costs and some promising projects remain unavailable.
Practical authority
A human surveillance state, not an AI sovereign.
Human institutions with genuinely revisable mandates.
Benefits and costs
Avoiding superintelligence is the regime’s stated objective, not a guarantee of general safety. Coercion and extensive surveillance under a lasting political freeze.
Risk constraints that can be publicly reconsidered. Inspections, foregone capabilities and incentives to defect.
Practical human governing authority
Humans retain practical final authority
Linked source premise. The linked 1984 premise puts a human-led surveillance regime in charge, without ASI.
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 a lasting totalitarian research prohibition as a mandate citizens cannot effectively revise.
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
A single authority governs the whole arrangement
Project editorial inference. The project reads the global surveillance state as one final order, not several independent polities.
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 premise retains humanity under the surveillance state.
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. A ban on superintelligence research does not settle which other transformations are permitted.
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 expressly prohibits superintelligence research.
Selected capabilities face enforced limits
Additional project hypothetical. Selected dangerous capabilities face enforced institutional limits.
Visible exercise of governing power
People know who exercises governing power
Project editorial inference. The human state visibly enforces the prohibition; this does not claim that every surveillance operation is public.
People know who exercises governing power
Additional project hypothetical. The authored restrictions and authority to impose them are public.
Practical independence from a technical provider
Depends on the variant; no single answer
Unresolved. The regime’s surveillance could rely on concentrated or replaceable infrastructure.
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
Material conditions and the regime’s stability.
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 1984 sources or Negotiated Ceiling sources.