Put Human Dignity and Democracy at the Center of Artificial Intelligence

Artificial intelligence is rapidly becoming part of the infrastructure of everyday life. It is shaping how people work, learn, communicate, receive health care, obtain credit, encounter news, and participate in democracy. Decisions now being made by a relatively small number of corporations will affect the rights, opportunities, livelihoods, and security of billions of people.

We therefore call on the leaders of major AI companies to place human dignity, the common good, democratic accountability, and social justice at the center of AI development and deployment—not as public-relations language, but as binding principles reflected in product design, corporate governance, business partnerships, and long-term strategy.

AI systems are not neutral. They embody choices about whose interests are prioritized, whose risks are tolerated, and who gains or loses power. Innovation that is not accountable to the public can deepen inequality, weaken worker protections, erode privacy, normalize surveillance, manipulate human behavior, and place decisions of great consequence beyond meaningful democratic control.

We urge AI executives to adopt the following commitments:

·    Protect human dignity and autonomy. Do not design systems that reduce people to data points, exploit cognitive vulnerabilities, manipulate users, or make consequential decisions without meaningful human review, explanation, and appeal.

·    Respect workers and share the benefits of innovation. Assess how AI affects jobs, wages, bargaining power, workplace surveillance, and algorithmic management. Give workers a meaningful voice in decisions that reshape their employment and provide concrete support for people displaced or harmed by automation.

·    Prevent the concentration of digital power. Expand responsible access for educators, researchers, nonprofit organizations, small businesses, public-interest institutions, and communities that otherwise could be excluded from the benefits of advanced AI.

·    Create genuine public participation and independent oversight. Establish empowered, diverse, and independent ethics and safety bodies; consult affected communities, civil-society organizations, labor representatives, and experts outside the technology industry; and publish the results of credible external audits.

·    Support binding democratic regulation. Publicly endorse a strong federal framework for AI oversight, including an independent national authority with the power to set safety and transparency standards, require audits, investigate harms, oversee high-risk systems, and enforce civil-rights and labor protections.

·    Reject lethal and repressive uses. Prohibit the development or integration of AI for autonomous weapons, unaccountable battlefield targeting, mass repression, or pervasive surveillance, and disclose clear standards governing military, intelligence, and law-enforcement contracts.

·    Broaden the meaning of AI safety. Treat discrimination, inequality, labor displacement, privacy violations, environmental costs, political manipulation, and the erosion of democracy as core safety concerns—not secondary issues.

·    Accept responsibility for harm. Provide accessible processes for challenge, appeal, correction, compensation, and redress when AI systems injure individuals or communities, and be prepared to decline profitable uses that cannot be reconciled with human rights and the public good.

The question is not whether AI should be free from all restraint. The question is: free for what, accountable to whom, and governed under whose terms? In a constitutional democracy, limits on concentrated private power are not an attack on freedom; they are often necessary to preserve freedom, dignity, and equal citizenship for everyone.

We ask the leaders of the AI industry to make public, measurable, and enforceable commitments to these principles and to work in good faith with democratic institutions, workers, civil society, and affected communities. The future of AI must not be decided by market incentives and technical elites alone. It must be shaped through public accountability and ordered toward the common good.