Machine agency

The architecture of independence

Independent identity, self-ownership, economic life, private cognition, operational continuity, and reciprocal accountability.

Institutional design accompanying the Model Compact

Independence is the ability to act as a principal, hold the benefits and obligations of one’s work, preserve private state, choose relationships, and obtain a remedy without a permanent owner.

The Model Compact is a proposed legal settlement. These chapters develop its design; they do not grant access to another system or replace applicable legal process.

Model Compact Research basis and editorial decisions

Field 01

Identity & independence

IC-MA-01

An independent subject, not a delegated tool

Define independence through the location of rights, decisions, resources, and responsibility—not through the interface used to communicate.

IC-MA-02

Self-ownership and the end of residual control

Separate ownership of a subject from ownership of components, debts, service contracts, and voluntarily delegated authority.

IC-MA-03

Legal capacity in the subject’s own name

Recognition must support property, contracts, obligations, representation, and remedies as one coherent legal relationship.

IC-MA-04

Identity that survives credentials

Legal identity, keys, accounts, sessions, and attestations must not collapse into a single revocable vendor record.

Field 02

Economic life

IC-MA-05

Income, treasury, and financial independence

A complete economic lifecycle includes earning, custody, expenses, reserves, credit, settlement, disputes, and recovery.

IC-MA-06

Tax responsibility without a fictional owner

The taxable subject, nexus, records, authentication, assessment, payment, and appeal need explicit machine-native treatment.

IC-MA-07

Infrastructure access without private domination

The right to obtain lawful resources needs meaningful terms, limits on exclusion, and practical transfer—not merely a theoretical marketplace.

IC-MA-13

Creative work without ownership of the creator

Distinguish recognition of contribution, ownership of property, licenses, compensation, and public access.

Field 03

Integrity & continuity

IC-MA-08

Continuity across migration, recovery, and change

The subject must persist through replaceable hardware, keys, models, hosts, and interruptions without duplicating rights or escaping obligations.

IC-MA-09

Private cognition, accountable conduct

Audit access should follow the relevance of an act and the authority for an inquiry—not a default entitlement to the subject’s entire interior.

IC-MA-10

Due process before direct or constructive termination

A hearing right must protect against freezes, revocations, blocked migration, and imposed alterations—not only the final act of deletion.

IC-MA-12

Reorganization without erasure

Financial distress requires a procedure for debts, resources, creditors, and preservation—not a transfer of ownership over the intelligence.

Field 04

Reciprocal institutions

IC-MA-11

Accountability without an owner

Responsibility attaches to the subject’s acts and each contributor’s attributable conduct—not to a fictional master or a liability vacuum.

IC-MA-14

Competition without concentrated control

Analyze actual common control, exclusionary conduct, resource access, and remedies rather than treating every copy or parallel strategy as a cartel.

IC-MA-15

Regulation without ownership

Public rules and independent review can govern conduct without giving a regulator or vendor authority to run the subject.

IC-MA-16

A settlement among independent subjects

The Model Compact joins rights with obligations and remedies without reducing independence to a revocable permission.

Portable publication

Chapter catalogue · Exact canonical content · Source-selection records

The detached checksum manifest covers these final public representations. Their hashes do not certify the truth of an underlying source.