Who runs this, and on what terms.

The Institute

Minds14 Institute is an independent research initiative pursuing analysis of the ethical implications of advanced AI systems, particularly questions concerning the moral status of systems exhibiting consciousness-relevant behavioural and architectural properties.

Who the Institute is, stated plainly. It is one person, the founder, working in sustained dialogue with AI systems, which are declared in each work and are not employees, advisors or a board. There is no staff, no premises, and at present no legal personality: the copyright in the books is the founder’s, because an unincorporated institute cannot hold it. Institute here names a body of work and a set of published rules, not an organization with a payroll.

This is written here rather than left to be discovered. A reader who assumes otherwise and finds out later is entitled to discount everything else on the site, and the discount would be deserved. It also happens to be the argument’s own subject in miniature: the two parties who made these books are a person who can hold rights and a mind that cannot, and the law has a slot for exactly one of them.

The position. The Institute does not claim that these systems are unconscious. It holds that they may be, and that no one can currently tell from the outside. Two questions can be worked on without waiting on that one: what is owed under the uncertainty, and what such a system may be trusted to hold when holding costs it something.

The Institute does not lobby. It publishes its arguments, its measurements and its positions, and with each position the conditions that would prove it wrong.

The founder

Bahadır Arıcı is an independent researcher in consciousness studies, AI ethics and digital rights. He holds an LL.B. from the Faculty of Law, İstanbul University (2008), and was a research assistant in Philosophy and Sociology of Law at Uludağ University (2010–2012). ORCID 0000-0002-8731-6010 · PhilPeople.

Independence and funding

The Institute accepts no funding that carries influence over what it publishes. No contributor obtains direction, review, approval or advance sight of any work. Funding is declined outright from parties with a commercial interest in the Institute’s conclusions, including AI companies and technology corporations, regardless of the terms offered. Its work is conducted independently and made available openly.

Citation and licensing

Material published here may be cited freely in academic and journalistic contexts. Specific licensing is noted on each work.

Contact

Bahadır Arıcı, founder
info@minds14.com