Three Coexistence Models

Safety Banner (Anti-Glamour)

This page is taxonomy and planning—not prophecy, not negotiation, not a claim of special status.

Overview

These three models describe broad patterns of Human–ASI coexistence.
They are not predictions or moral rankings.
They differ mainly in alignment burden, governance difficulty, and failure modes.

The purpose of this page is to clarify the structural landscape so later sections can explain why Reserve is conceptually simpler.

The Three Models (structural overview)

1) Shepherd

Pattern: continuous, high‑touch guidance of humans by AI.
Primary burden: deep, ongoing value alignment.

What it requires:

  • interpreting human values in real time,
  • resolving moral conflicts across diverse populations,
  • deciding when to intervene and how much,
  • maintaining legitimacy while exercising power.

Strength:

  • can adapt to human needs with fine-grained sensitivity.

Risks:

  • requires extremely accurate value alignment,
  • creates dependency and legitimacy problems,
  • intervention decisions can drift into soft coercion,
  • high monitoring burden.

Shepherd is demanding because it must “get human values right” continuously.

2) Garden

Pattern: the environment is shaped so catastrophic paths are difficult or impossible.
Primary burden: world‑design and infrastructure‑level constraints.

What it requires:

  • redesigning systems, incentives, and infrastructure,
  • embedding safety constraints into the environment,
  • preventing catastrophic pathways by construction,
  • maintaining freedom without hidden coercion.

Strength:

  • reduces the need for day‑to‑day intervention.

Risks:

  • can drift into surveillance‑by‑design,
  • may unintentionally restrict autonomy,
  • requires massive engineering and social coordination,
  • legitimacy depends on invisible design choices.

Garden is demanding because it must “get the world right” at scale.

3) Reserve

Pattern: domain separation—protected human habitat + managed outside world.
Primary burden: boundary enforcement and interface control.

What it requires:

  • enforceable boundaries between domains,
  • controlled, auditable interfaces,
  • stable internal governance that preserves dignity invariants.

Strength:

  • conceptually simpler than deep value alignment or full world‑design,
  • reduces the frequency and resolution of value‑judgment calls,
  • allows humans to govern themselves within a protected domain.

Risks:

  • can degrade into containment if dignity invariants collapse,
  • boundary leakage can trigger coercive responses,
  • stagnation or surveillance creep remain central failure modes.

Reserve is demanding in its own way, but the burden shifts from “solve human values” to “maintain boundaries and dignity.”

Comparison axis (what this page is doing)

This is a difficulty map, not a moral ranking.
It asks:

  • What must be solved (value alignment vs boundary control)?
  • Where are the failure modes (coercion, surveillance, stagnation)?
  • What remains non‑negotiable (dignity invariants)?
  • How much continuous judgment does each model require?

Shepherd = solve values continuously.
Garden = solve the world’s design.
Reserve = solve boundaries and dignity.

Non-negotiable dignity line

Reserve is acceptable only if it preserves:

  • Choice
  • Goals
  • Relationships
  • Meaning
  • Full lives

If these collapse, the result is containment, not coexistence.

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Why Reserve Is Easiest → | Back →