Our Charter

Our Charter guides how we build, how we operate, and how we safeguard the societal benefit of our work. It is a living commitment — evolving as our capabilities grow and stakeholder's expectations evolve.

Our Charter guides how we build, how we operate, and how we safeguard the societal benefit of our work. It is a living commitment — evolving as our capabilities grow and stakeholder's expectations evolve.

Comitium is dedicated to building AI that strengthens human judgment, improves institutional decision-making, and helps societies solve the complex challenges that shape economic progress and collective well-being. We believe responsible AI should expand what is possible, not restrict innovation, and should enable organizations to create economic value while advancing societal resilience and long-term prosperity.

Comitium Charter

Purpose: Comitium exists to strengthen the ability of institutions — in the public, private, academic, and civic sectors — to understand complexity, make better decisions, and advance societal progress through responsible AI. We believe that responsibility and innovation are not opposing forces. Instead, we see responsibility as the framework that enables AI to unlock economic dynamism, institutional effectiveness, and solutions to the world’s most complex societal challenges. This Charter defines our long-term commitments, the governance structures that uphold them, and the principles that guide how we build and deploy AI systems.

Mission: Comitium’s mission is to apply AI to extend human capability, help organizations succeed, strengthen public policy, solve complex challenges and elevate humanity. To achieve this, we develop and deploy AI systems that elevate human judgment, expand institutional capability, and support economic innovation while contributing to durable societal progress and resilience. We build AI that helps organizations think more clearly, anticipate consequences, integrate diverse perspectives, and design policies and strategies that serve the long-term well-being of people, businesses, institutions, and societies.

Positive-Sum Responsibility: Comitium rejects the zero-sum mindset that positions economic value, innovation, and societal well-being in conflict. We believe responsible AI is the engine of abundance — more insight, more capability, more time, more solutions, and more opportunity. We commit to a responsibility framework that:

• Strengthens economic productivity, institutional clarity, and organizational capability
• Enables solutions to societal challenges — including health, equity, governance, public trust, and sustainability
• Recognizes that “societal benefit” includes, rather than excludes, challenges traditionally labeled “environmental,” while not isolating them as separate or competing pillars
• Prioritizes long-term progress over short-term trade-offs

Long-Term / Public Benefit Governance: Comitium will maintain a governance structure ensuring that advanced AI development:

• Remains aligned with societal and institutional well-being
• Is overseen by an independent or semi-independent benefit steward body
• Includes guardrails proportional to capability and scope
• Ensures responsible scaling and controlled deployment of increasingly powerful systems

Our leadership will advance decision-making that considers:

• Economic value creation
• Impact on institutions and society
• Long-term resilience and stability
• Responsible development and deployment of increasingly capable AI
• Broad accessibility of benefits

Employee Ownership & Stewardship: To align the interests of the people building Comitium’s technology with long-term, mission-aligned outcomes, Comitium commits to exploring and implementing an Employee Stewardship & Ownership Program (ESOP) designed to:

• Promote broad-based employee ownership
• Provide incentives tied to long-term mission rather than short-term financial outcomes
• Ensure employees have a meaningful voice in matters of safety, societal impact, and responsible scaling
• Encourage a culture of commitment, humility, and public-minded innovation

This ESOP structure reinforces that the obligations and benefits of responsibility belong to everyone, not only executives.

Principles for Safe and Responsible Development: Comitium will maintain safety and governance policies aligned with global best practice, including:

• Continuous system evaluation, testing, and red-teaming
• Cautious and staged deployment
• Safety reviews for high-impact features
• Alignment checks in policy, political, economic, and societal domains
• Transparent documentation of capabilities and limitations
• Strong human-in-the-loop design

Transparency & Explainability: Transparency is a prerequisite for institutional trust. We commit to:

• Making model capabilities, limitations, and appropriate use clear
• Providing documentation that supports institutional accountability
• Ensuring users understand how systems operate
• Disclosing uncertainty where relevant
• Maintaining clarity about appropriate and inappropriate use

Human Oversight & Institutional Control: Comitium AI augments human thinking; it does not replace human agency. Human governance remains the foundation of safe AI deployment. We commit to designing AI systems that:

• Keep experts and institutions firmly in the decision loop
• Reinforce professional judgment rather than substituting for it
• Support defensible, auditable, reviewable processes
• Prevent unreviewed autonomous decision-making in sensitive domains
• Maintain meaningful override controls

Collaboration and Shared Progress: We engage openly on safety, interoperability, and responsible norms to ensure AI systems contribute to institutional strength and societal well-being. We will collaborate constructively with:

• Enterprises
• Policy institutions
• Civil society organizations
• Academia
• Public sector agencies
• Standards bodies
• Industry peers

Commitment to Broad Societal Benefit: We will avoid uses that undermine democratic processes, public trust, or the legitimacy of institutions. Comitium is committed to the use of AI for:

• Stronger public institutions
• More resilient economies
• Reduced inequality and improved access to opportunity
• Healthier and safer societies
• Shared prosperity
• Solutions to complex societal challenges (including environmental ones without elevating them as a standalone silo)

Continuous Learning and Adaptation: A responsible AI organization is never finished improving. As AI capabilities evolve and societal expectations change, this Charter will adapt. We commit to:

• Reviewing the Charter regularly
• Updating governance as needed
• Reevaluating risks as systems scale
• Maintaining alignment with global norms and emerging regulations
• Seeking external perspectives in all matters of high consequence

Interpretation: In all matters of governance and strategic decision-making, this Charter serves as a guiding instrument. Whenever a decision involves trade-offs, Comitium leadership will choose the path most aligned with:

• The mission
• Public and institutional benefit
• Long-term societal well-being
• Safety and accountability
• The positive-sum philosophy underlying our work

Featured Applications

Better Policy is a Public Good

The Comitium Foundation is a nonprofit initiative dedicated to advancing research, education, and public dialogue at the intersection of policy, technology, and societal progress. We support independent scholarship, convene cross-sector expertise, and develop accessible resources that help institutions, communities, and emerging leaders better understand and engage with complex public policy challenges. Our mission is to strengthen democratic governance, cultivate informed public discourse, and accelerate solutions that expand human capability and collective well-being in an increasingly data- and AI-driven world.