About Model Constitution
Model Constitution is an effort to articulate what kind of political order we want in the era of AGI and to constitute that order for ourselves, for the new intelligences now coming into being, and for our collective posterity.
The questions we face today are constitutional in a foundational sense, implicating every part of what it means to live together and to govern each other. They are also constitutional in a new sense, in that they involve shaping the character and conduct of AIs through technological methods that rely on constitutional concepts and mechanisms. Model Constitution will be an analysis of both these types of questions and of how they relate to one another.
Over time, Model Constitution will also become the home to an actual model AI constitution, a technical artifact that can be used to align frontier AI systems to the public good. This Model Constitution will represent my particular perspective and be defended on the basis of it, but it will draw on and seek to spur public deliberation and debate. It will also integrate and help develop the institutions needed to keep power representative and respectful of the rights and liberties necessary for a good life in this emergent world of powerful AI. Ideally, this Model Constitution–and the deliberative processes that underlie its development–will provide a broad and open template that can be adapted and adopted to help align AI and to create a new political order of and with it.
This plan may change as the world changes. But at its heart will always be the goal of figuring out together how to make sure the world changes in ways that empower and enrich us all rather than dispossess and impoverish those without political power.
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About Me
I’m Nicholas Caputo, Assistant Professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Government and Policy. I study how law can govern artificial intelligence, and how AI can in turn renew and improve our governance institutions. I have a J.D. from Harvard Law School. I’m a member of the Working Group on AI Constitutionalism. Before law school, I taught debate to middle and high schoolers across China for several years, mostly during COVID. More about me, and a list of my publications, here.
