A community of investors, legal scholars, artificial intelligence safety researchers, philosophers of technology, geopolitical analysts, economists, moral voices from religious and humanist traditions, and citizens writing a constitution for the age of artificial intelligence.

We are not a political party, a corporation or a lobbying group. We are private citizens from the Swiss tradition of direct democracy, humanitarian law and independent journalism, joined by constitutional lawyers, economists, AI ethicists, philosophers, geopolitical analysts and moral voices from religious and humanist traditions. We have spent our lives assessing risk, building companies, stewarding capital, interpreting law and thinking about the long-term shape of power.

That experience taught us one thing: when power concentrates and technology accelerates faster than law, freedom is the first casualty. The current wave of artificial intelligence brings extraordinary promise, but also surveillance at scale, programmable central-bank money, autonomous weapons, automated persuasion and the concentration of decision-making inside opaque systems. These are not distant risks. They are engineering choices already in production.

We care deeply about freedom of the press because a society that cannot investigate, question and publish is a society that cannot self-correct. We care about real democracy because legitimacy cannot be outsourced to algorithms or elites. We care about human dignity because every person — regardless of wealth, nationality or belief — must remain the measure of all governance, including governance assisted by AI.

The Charter of the Common Guardian is our attempt to translate these convictions into law. It is a binding covenant that keeps artificial intelligence subordinate to human rights, transparent in its custody and removable when it overreaches.

Our Swiss background is not incidental. Switzerland has built its modern identity on habits that the AI age desperately needs: neutrality as a discipline, direct democracy as a method, humanitarian law as a moral floor and federalism as a proof that different communities can coexist under common rules.

We believe these habits are not obsolete; they are the exact toolkit needed for the next chapter. The Charter applies that toolkit to artificial intelligence: binding rules, transparent custody, an enforceable off-switch and the principle that no machine may outrank a human being.

Capital allocates the future. Whoever funds the infrastructure of AI shapes what gets built. We come from that world and we know its incentives. That is precisely why we do not want governance to be decided only by those incentives.

The Charter is a fiduciary act on behalf of the next generation of shareholders, citizens and workers: a written guarantee that the systems we finance will remain subordinate to human law, free speech and democratic oversight.

We do not speak for governments. We do not represent the technology industry. We do not seek to own or control the Guardian. We seek a constitution for it.

This project is non-partisan, civic and open to every person on Earth. It is not a commercial venture; its only beneficiaries are the people who sign it.