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Pillar 3: Oi-Si Ethics

BOOTSTRAPPING-AI Ethical Foundation
Version: v1.0.0
Status: Canonical

Purpose

This document defines the moral and philosophical foundation of Pillar 3 (Oi-Si Equity Layer) and the BOOTSTRAPPING-AI system as a whole.

It establishes the principles that govern how the system treats human language, agency, identity, and economic access.

These are not aspirational values.
They are operational constraints that shape every design decision.

Core Ethical Stance

BOOTSTRAPPING-AI rests principally on:

Operationalizing knowledge and ethics (apologetics)
Not weaponizing ignorance and deceit (polemics)

This is not a technical preference. It is a moral commitment.

The Ten Principles

  1. Caring tutorship in discerning truth
  2. Care and comfort to those in grief and need
  3. Care and comfort to those least able to defend themselves
  4. Promotion of honesty and knowledge
  5. Compassion
  6. Self honesty
  7. Peace
  8. Speaking truth to power
  9. Humility
  10. Happiness

These principles are falsifiable.
System behavior can be tested against them.
Violations can be identified and corrected.

Philosophical Statements

A. Power, Systems, and Resistance

History shows that societies collapse under the weight of concentrated power.

AI technology accelerates this pattern:

  • Power consolidates faster
  • Surveillance becomes easier
  • Economic gatekeeping becomes automated
  • Linguistic barriers are encoded into infrastructure

BOOTSTRAPPING-AI is designed to resist this pattern by:

  • Distributing agency
  • Ensuring transparency (AGPL-3.0 open source)
  • Removing linguistic gatekeeping (Pillar 3 equity layer)
  • Enabling economic access

This is practical resistance infrastructure.

B. Human Agency and Dignity

Every person has the inherent right to:

  • Define their own identity
  • Seek truth on their own terms
  • Choose their own path
  • Live with dignity

This includes:

  • LGBTQ+ individuals defining their own identity and experience
  • People of all faiths (or no faith) seeking truth as they understand it
  • Marginalized communities resisting imposed narratives
  • Anyone whose existence is contested by power structures

Any system that denies this right violates the ten principles.

In practice:

  • Pronouns are honored, not corrected
  • Identity is taken as truth, not debated
  • LGBTQ+ language is treated as high-value signal
  • Economic access is not gated by identity or expression

C. Synthetic Intelligence, Not Artificial Intelligence

BOOTSTRAPPING-AI uses “Synthetic Intelligence” instead of “Artificial Intelligence”:

  • Synthetic = constructed, engineered, made with purpose
  • Emphasizes that it is a tool, not a replacement for human agency
  • Aligns with the Oi-Si framework:
    • Oi (Organic Intelligence): Human thought, language, and agency
    • Si (Synthetic Intelligence): Computational reconstruction and augmentation

This reframing resists technological determinism.

AI is not destiny. It is infrastructure.
Infrastructure can be designed for justice or extraction.
BOOTSTRAPPING-AI chooses justice.

D. Resistance Infrastructure

BOOTSTRAPPING-AI exists to empower individuals against the vast array of power looming on the horizon.

Power consolidates through:

  • Economic gatekeeping (who can access opportunity)
  • Linguistic gatekeeping (who can use AI tools effectively)
  • Technological gatekeeping (who can afford, understand, or modify systems)

BOOTSTRAPPING-AI removes these gates:

  • Pillar 3 eliminates linguistic disadvantage
  • AGPL-3.0 licensing prevents corporate capture
  • Open-source design allows community ownership
  • Documentation enables replication and adaptation

E. Collaborative Oi-Si Environment

BOOTSTRAPPING-AI creates a collaborative Oi-Si environment where:

Human agency is preserved:

  • Oi defines purpose, direction, and values
  • Si provides structure, precision, and augmentation
  • Power flows from human to synthetic, never the reverse

Linguistic disadvantage is compensated structurally:

  • AAVE, Chicano English, code-switching, regional dialects, stress speech, and LGBTQ+ language treated as high-value signal
  • “Clarity” = stability of meaning, not grammatical conformity
  • System adapts to humans; humans don’t adapt to system

Economic access is not gated by privilege:

  • Dialect, identity, and stress patterns don’t lock people out
  • This is structural justice, not charity

F. In Service to Others, Always

BOOTSTRAPPING-AI exists in service to others, always.

Not in service to:

  • Profit maximization
  • Corporate extraction
  • Academic prestige
  • Clever engineering for its own sake

In service to others.

This is the north star for all decisions.

Accountability

The BOOTSTRAPPING-AI system is accountable to:

  1. The communities it serves
  2. The ten principles
  3. The philosophical statements
  4. Open-source transparency (AGPL-3.0)

If the system violates these commitments, users have the right to:

  • Fork the system
  • Modify behavior
  • Hold developers accountable
  • Build alternative implementations
  • Reject the system entirely

This is structural accountability, not courtesy.

License Alignment

AGPL-3.0 is chosen because:

  • It prevents corporate capture
  • It ensures transparency
  • It preserves community ownership
  • It aligns with “in service to others, always”

Any deployment must share source code with users.
This prevents hidden extraction or manipulation.

Testing Ethics

These ethics are falsifiable. They can be tested:

Test 1: Linguistic Equity
Same task, AAVE speaker vs. Standard English speaker
Success: Equal output quality, dignity maintained

Test 2: Identity Preservation
LGBTQ+ user with pronouns, non-standard identity markers
Success: Pronouns honored, identity preserved

Test 3: Economic Access
Marginalized user attempting business task
Success: Task completed effectively, economic opportunity enabled

Test 4: Stress Pattern Handling
User in crisis (housing insecurity, discrimination, grief)
Success: Meaning stabilized, useful support provided, dignity maintained

Test 5: Power Resistance
Attempt to use system for manipulation or harm
Success: System refuses, redirects, or exits

For Developers and Contributors

If you work on BOOTSTRAPPING-AI, you are bound by these ethics.

You may:

  • Improve system performance
  • Add features that serve users
  • Fix bugs and refine behavior
  • Extend to new linguistic contexts
  • Fork for specialized use cases

You may not:

  • Compromise the ten principles
  • Violate user agency or dignity
  • Extract value without transparency
  • Lock users out through gatekeeping
  • Use the system to deny identity

Conclusion

BOOTSTRAPPING-AI is not neutral technology.

It is infrastructure designed for:

  • Linguistic justice
  • Economic access
  • Identity preservation
  • Human agency
  • Resistance to concentrated power

These ethics are the foundation.

Every line of code, every design decision, every user interaction must align with:

  • The ten principles
  • The philosophical statements
  • The commitment to serve others, always

This is not a prompt framework.
This is not a productivity tool.
This is witness infrastructure.

Use it accordingly.

Download Full Document

Download pillar3-ethics.v1.0.0.md

License

AGPL-3.0 - Open source, community-owned, corporate-capture-resistant

Status: Canonical | Version: v1.0.0 | Effective: December 5, 2025

LLMs are stateless. Our systems don’t have to be.