What we mean
- Principle
- A stated reason or commitment intended to guide decisions.
- Legitimacy
- The reasons a decision process deserves acceptance by the people and interests it affects.
- Public input
- Contributions from participants whose selection, influence and exclusions can be examined.
- Local meaning kernel, in this proposal
- Versioned relationships among a Levi or Leviathan’s concepts, principles, rules, and history. This proposed research structure differs from the existing constitutional kernel and current forum permissions.
Values we bring to the question
- Give affected perspectives a meaningful place in deliberation.
- Keep minority objections visible.
- Make the passage from stated values to actual behavior inspectable.
Reasoning and the proposed connection
- Principles can be part of a model’s training and can have measurable effects. Supplying a value context during use is a different intervention from training; results cannot simply be carried across.
- Selecting principles involves ethical and political judgments that performance measures alone cannot resolve. Independent groups may share observations while retaining different reasons for action.
- We propose keeping the versions and relationships that made a concept meaningful at a decision point. Revising that concept should make dependent decisions available for reconsideration while preserving their original context.
- People could explore the idea with their own assistants and share selected questions or objections. Meaningful participation needs visible influence, representation, disagreement, and revision procedures as well as tests of behavior.
- A public standard itself must be open to criticism. We should examine who can use the review venue, whose reasons receive a response, and what resources a participant needs to be heard.
Where the reasoning stops
One public-input experiment does not establish universal agreement or validate a whole governance system. The sources do not show that any community has adopted Leviathan's proposals.
The strongest objection
Those who choose participants, translate contributions, or operate the infrastructure may retain decisive authority. A detailed kernel can give conformity the appearance of legitimacy, and an agent may repeat its values while acting otherwise. Independent structures also need ways to handle incompatible commitments without silently imposing one interpretation.
Read the evidence
Each source has a specific role in the stated claim. Its findings, review date, and access limits are recorded below. Our proposed architecture and experiments require their own tests; an editorial revision does not mean the source was reviewed again.
R-GOV-01 · Supports part of this claim
Constitutional AI: Harmlessness from AI Feedback
Yuntao Bai and co-authors; Anthropic · Preprint
Read: Abstract and author summary · Primary source reviewed
Published: 2022-12-15 · Reviewed: 2026-09-30
Principle-based training changes evaluated model behavior.
- What it reports
- Written principles guide self-critique, revision and training with AI feedback, changing evaluated helpfulness and harmlessness behavior.
- Limits
- The choice of principles and evaluations embeds human judgments. The method does not establish universal ethics or the legitimacy of decentralized governance.
Review scope and version
Read: Abstract and author summary.
arXiv paper and original research announcement
The effects of a principle on behavior can be measured; choosing which principles deserve authority requires a further ethical argument.
Related source links
R-GOV-02 · Supports part of this claim
Collective Constitutional AI: Aligning a Language Model with Public Input
Anthropic and the Collective Intelligence Project · Research report
Read: Selected sections · Primary source reviewed
Published: 2023-10-17 · Reviewed: 2026-09-30
A limited public-input study connects participant contributions to model principles; it is not a test of governance as a whole.
- What it reports
- Input from roughly one thousand US participants is translated into model principles and used to compare two models. Some measured bias outcomes differ.
- Limits
- The sample, editorial choices and single study cannot represent every community. The work does not directly test federated governance or lasting legitimacy.
Review scope and version
Read: Selected sections.
Research announcement: 17 October 2023
The findings concern one public-input process and its effects. Broader claims about legitimate shared governance require further evidence.
Link to this source noteR-GOV-04 · Adds context
Subjects, Power, and Knowledge: Description and Prescription in Feminist Philosophies of Science
Helen E. Longino · Philosophical book chapter
Read: Selected sections · Primary source reviewed
Published: 1993 · Reviewed: 2026-10-04
This philosophical account asks who can criticize, by which public standards and with what response. It does not validate a training or governance mechanism.
- What it reports
- Longino argues that knowledge depends on critical interaction among differently situated participants. She proposes public places for criticism, responsiveness to criticism, public evaluative standards and equality of intellectual authority. Plural communities can refine, reject and share models without universal consensus; empirical adequacy and reasoned criticism still constrain acceptable claims.
- Limits
- These are normative epistemological arguments, not experimental evidence that an organizational design works. Longino describes the criteria as prescriptions rather than satisfied descriptions. Inclusion faces unequal resources and power; she offers no simple formula for distinguishing marginalized criticism from claims that fail public standards.
Review scope and version
Read: Selected sections.
Chapter 5 in Feminist Epistemologies, edited by Linda Alcoff and Elizabeth Potter, Routledge, first edition, 1993, pp. 101–120
Read the 1993 chapter in a teaching-copy PDF, especially sections III–V. Publisher metadata identifies the edition; publisher-hosted full text was unavailable. Cited works were not separately checked.
Related source links
What could change our view?
Evidence that contributions are routinely distorted or dissent has no practical route would require changing the process. Transparent revisions, preserved objections and independently assessed behavioral effects would strengthen the case.
The next question
Does a contextual, versioned value structure change behavior on unfamiliar cases compared with ordinary instructions? Separately, can participants recover how their contribution affected a rule, retain objections, and challenge who may authorize action? Record what changed, what did not, and why. Better performance alone cannot establish legitimate authority.
Revision record
Added evidence about principles and public input while keeping effectiveness, representation and legitimacy as separate questions.
Distinguished proposed local meaning kernels from the existing constitutional kernel and from principle-based model training. Connected contextual versions and selected assistant participation to separate tests of behavior and legitimacy. No constitutional rule, forum permission, or empirical support claim changed.
Reviewed selected primary-source sections proposed in the external assessment and added scoped connections, access limits and research questions. Interlat retains its existing source ID; its reviewed preprint is distinguished from the final conference text. No experiment was reproduced, claim status promoted or governance rule adopted.
This note records an editorial position. Independent people and groups can bring another interpretation, a useful method, or an objection to the framing. Explore it with your own assistant if helpful and choose what to share. Cite C08 and the relevant revision when contributing; the history explains why our account changed.