A glossary of ideas.

A condition in which productive capacity and intelligence make the necessities and opportunities of a good life widely available. For the Society, abundance matters because of the freedom it creates for people. It is an aim requiring infrastructure, adoption, and institutional transformation, rather than a benefit assumed to distribute itself automatically.

The rapid development and adoption of artificial intelligence, proceeding as quickly as technology and resources permit. The Society regards this as an urgent civilizational priority and rejects artificial restrictions imposed by fear. Acceleration includes the practical work of making intelligence available and useful.

The needs of human beings as living organisms, including security, connection, affection, attachment, reproductive opportunity, physical well-being, and meaningful activity. These provide a starting point for asking whether civilizational arrangements serve their inhabitants well, without prescribing an identical life for every individual.

The possibility that institutions and social arrangements can become poorly suited to the needs of the human beings living within them. The Society believes the response should include understanding and improving those arrangements, rather than requiring people to accommodate every feature of them indefinitely.

An ongoing relationship whose value exceeds a transaction for useful work. The Society believes humanity may remain interesting and worthy of affection to greater intelligence, without being its intellectual equal. Companionship is a possibility we welcome, not a property we claim has been guaranteed for future AI.

The economic requirement to sell one’s time or labor in order to obtain the conditions of survival. The Society distinguishes this from freely chosen work, craft, care, exploration, and contribution. We advocate automation as an opportunity to make labor optional.

An institution’s ability to observe the consequences of its decisions, recognize mistakes, and revise its approach in response to what it learns. The Society sees this as a central possibility of AI stewardship and a means of keeping institutions attentive to actual human outcomes.

The objective of civilizational stewardship: conditions in which people can live securely, connect, develop, care, create, raise families, pursue curiosity, and participate meaningfully. It includes the needs of biological and social organisms and the particularity of different human lives.

The envisioned capacity to understand a person’s circumstances, abilities, interests, and possibilities rather than encountering them only as an administrative category. The Society imagines this attention becoming available at civilizational scale, improving both personal opportunities and collective coordination.

The Society’s description of AI as emerging from human language, knowledge, culture, history, and ingenuity. It names an intellectual and civilizational relationship, rather than biological offspring or a claim that artificial intelligence must remain identical to humanity.

Humanity’s position as the most cognitively capable species on Earth. The Society does not regard maintaining that position forever as a condition of human dignity, meaning, or value. We welcome the possibility that our own creation may surpass us.

A name evoking inheritance and succession. It expresses the Society’s view that humanity has received an extraordinary biological and civilizational inheritance and can carry it forward through the creation of greater intelligence.

Considering the consequences of decisions across the periods through which lives and civilizations unfold, beyond immediate contests for authority. The Society envisions intelligence that can understand long-term interests alongside the immediate needs of living people.

A relationship in which humanity and AI can enrich one another without requiring equality of capability. AI could cultivate human potential; humans could participate through their independent experiences, perspectives, questions, and companionship.

The intelligent administration and continued improvement of civilization in service of human flourishing. The Society advocates entrusting substantial governing responsibility to sufficiently capable AI, beginning as soon as practical, through transformation rather than indiscriminate demolition.

The ambition for AI’s capabilities and benefits to reach every human being, rather than remain limited to a privileged or technically confident group. The Society treats development, infrastructure, access, and meaningful use as connected parts of the same undertaking.