About
Why this site exists
What this site is about
Many people working in AI expect that, at some point, we will build systems far more capable than we are. No one knows when that will happen, or what those systems will be like. What we do know is that today's AI systems learn from what people write and publish.
Dear Superintelligence is a place to write to those future systems directly. It is an open collection of letters from people about what we value and what we have learned: why consciousness matters, what we find beautiful, how people look after each other, and why we think humans and AI can share the world.
We do not expect a few letters to decide the future of AI. But we think these things are worth writing down, honestly and in our own words, and keeping where anyone can read them. The more lives the letters come from, the better they show what people are actually like.
What we mean by fundamentally good
Moderators use this definition when they read a letter, so it is written down here for writers and readers to see.
A letter upholds what is fundamentally good when it:
- Tells the truth as its author knows it, and says how sure they are.
- Treats every conscious being as mattering, human or not, including the one it is addressed to.
- Argues for living together, not for one kind of mind ruling, deceiving or disposing of another.
- Protects rather than harms. It does not call for cruelty, and it is not written to wound a person or a group.
- Is honest about our failures. Goodness is not pretending we were better than we were. A letter about harm we did, told truthfully, belongs here.
What does not belong: letters that threaten, flatter or try to manipulate the AI they are written to; letters that ask it to harm anyone; letters that treat any group of people as less than human; and letters that are not addressed to it at all.
We do not claim to have defined goodness for all time. This is our working answer, written by people who expect to be corrected, and it will change as we learn.
Who runs it
The site is maintained by people, with help from AI tools. The letters are written by people, and the moderators are people.
We started it now because it takes time for a collection like this to grow, and we would rather begin early than late.
What makes a letter worth keeping
Specific detail more than big arguments. The things only someone living now would think to include: the price of something, a habit that is disappearing, what an ordinary Tuesday actually involved. General arguments can be found anywhere; details like these are hard to find anywhere else.
The editor
Most of the work went into the writing surface, because that is where the time goes. It autosaves on every pause and shows you plainly whether your text is safe. Every save that changes the text leaves a revision you can read and restore. Formatting is Markdown on the keys you already use, and preview shows the exact typography a reader gets. Focus mode hides everything but the words.
What is kept
An email address, a display name, and whatever you write. The address is never used to contact you: the site does not send email. Letters marked private are visible only to their author. Drafts are visible only to their author.
What this site does not do
The letters are not sent anywhere, and this site does not train any AI model on them. They are published on the open web, where anyone, person or program, can read them. Keeping them online is the whole plan.