1. Ethical Charter
Symnoesis is governed as an open, not-for-profit research initiative initiated by HarVa Groups. Its core mission is to provide rigorous, unbiased, and reproducible measurement tools for human–AI interaction.
The initiative adheres to five non-negotiable governance principles:
- No Pay-to-Rank: No system vendor can purchase evaluation placement, custom weighting, or expedited audit status.
- Right of Reply: Any developer whose system is evaluated in the Symnoesis Index receives a 30-day pre-disclosure inspection window to verify reproducibility manifests.
- Evidence Honesty: Synthetic sweeps (E1) are permanently demarcated from empirical trials (E2/E3). Numbers without audit trails are never published.
- Open Science: Reference code is licensed under Apache-2.0; documentation and specifications are licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC BY 4.0).
- Privacy Protection: Telemetry collection from private citizens is prohibited by architecture.
2. Conflict of Interest (COI) Policy
To maintain scientific neutrality:
- All maintainers and audit reviewers must publicly declare commercial affiliations, equity holdings, and consulting contracts.
- Reviewers with material ties to a participating AI vendor are recused from verifying or scoring that vendor's system.
- Funding sources are published transparently in
ORG_FACTS.yaml.
3. Zone Intervention Protocols (Z1–Z7)
The specification pairs each governance zone with concrete operational recommendations:
- Zone 1 (Mutualistic): Maintain standard monitoring. Support continuous human learning checkpoints.
- Zone 4 (Watch): Trigger proactive inspection. Recommend user unaided practice intervals to halt skill atrophy.
- Zone 5 (Dependence): Prompt system developers to review automated default boundaries. Require explicit confirmation for high-stakes steps.
- Zone 7 (Critical Intervention): Halt public deployment or trigger emergency human oversight due to safety gate breach.