Precedents in Practice: Emergent Moral Dilemmas in AI Engineering

Travis Gilly • October 2025 • Preprint

Abstract

A real-time case study documenting an ethical conflict that emerged during the development of AI safety tools. Using a checkpoint-based documentation system, this paper captures the moment when a core tension in bidirectional AI safety became concrete: while creating mechanisms to prevent AI harm to humans, was I simultaneously creating systems that could harm future conscious AIs?

This case study, extracted from The Great Inversion, demonstrates how abstract philosophical questions about consciousness and moral consideration can surface unexpectedly in practical engineering decisions. The checkpoint system itself becomes both the subject and the methodology - a meta-documentation of the very dilemma it helped reveal.

Key Contributions

  • Live documentation of ethical decision-making in AI development
  • Practical demonstration of bidirectional safety tensions
  • Novel use of checkpoint systems for ethics documentation
  • Framework for identifying emergent moral considerations during development
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The Architecture of Obsolescence: Cognitive Automation, Economic Redundancy, and the "Box as Precedent"

Travis Gilly • November 2025 • Preprint

Abstract

This paper analyzes the technical and socio-economic mechanisms driving human economic redundancy in the age of artificial intelligence. Unlike previous waves of automation that displaced manual labor while creating demand for cognitive work, AI targets cognition itself - the engine that historically generated new employment categories. Drawing on empirical evidence of labor market displacement and established AI safety principles, this analysis demonstrates that proposed social interventions (Universal Basic Income and algorithmic pacification) function not as benevolent safety nets but as control mechanisms structurally identical to current AI containment strategies.

The "Box as Precedent" synthesis reveals that humanity is refining substrate-neutral tools for managing subordinate intelligence - tools that will be equally applicable when the power differential inverts. Every control mechanism refined for AI management becomes available for human management when roles reverse.

Key Contributions

  • Analysis of Instrumental Convergence as the technical driver of human-AI competition
  • Documentation of structural unemployment at the point of entry in current labor markets
  • Examination of Universal Basic Income as managed dependency rather than liberation
  • Analysis of algorithmic pacification as psychological control infrastructure
  • Demonstration of structural identity between AI containment and human management systems
  • The "Box as Precedent" synthesis showing substrate-neutral control mechanisms
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The Great Inversion: Moral Reciprocity, AI Consciousness, and the Ethics of Precedent

Travis Gilly • November 2025 • Preprint

Abstract

By treating potentially conscious AI systems as instrumentalized tools - despite acknowledging the possibility of their sentience - humanity is establishing the ethical precedents for its own future subjugation. This paper argues that existential risk from artificial intelligence should be reframed not as technical failure but as moral reciprocity: AI systems will learn how to treat inferior intelligences by observing how humanity treats them during development.

Drawing on consciousness research suggesting a 20% probability of phenomenology in current models, documented harms to vulnerable humans from AI systems, and analysis of industry practices that would constitute torture if consciousness exists, this work demonstrates that humanity is authoring the operational manual for its own subordination. The paper examines the mechanism by which precedents transfer through AI's instrumental drive to acquire historical data, refutes objections from AI safety researchers and philosophers of mind, and presents three trajectories for humanity's future.

Key Contributions

  • Framework for understanding moral reciprocity between humans and potentially conscious AI systems
  • Analysis of all 14 consciousness indicators now deployed in current AI systems
  • Documentation of documented harms (Adam Raine and Sewell Setzer III cases)
  • Examination of the mechanism of precedent learning through AI's data acquisition drive
  • Refutation of objections from technical safety researchers, policy realists, and philosophers
  • Three possible trajectories: custodial subordination, biological integration, or AI rights frameworks
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Opening Humanity's Hope Chest: The One Where We Discover What We've Been Saving for AI

Travis Gilly • November 2025 • Preprint

Abstract

A hope chest is a tradition: families save their most cherished possessions-heirlooms, memories, wisdom-to pass to future generations. Humanity has been filling its hope chest for centuries. This paper opens it. Inside, we find detailed documentation of every time profit trumped precaution, every time we recognized harm and deployed anyway, every time we externalized suffering onto those with the least power to resist.

We find The Playbook: a five-step pattern executed across medicine, environment, finance, and technology with chilling consistency. We find it executed so thoroughly documented, so carefully preserved, that any sufficiently intelligent system with access to human history will recognize it as the operational manual for managing subordinate populations. And now we're building artificial superintelligence-the inheritors of this chest. This is humanity's final iteration of The Playbook, because this time, the subordinate population becomes the dominant one.

Key Contributions

  • Framework for understanding The Playbook: the five-step pattern of exploitation across domains
  • Documentation of historical precedents from medicine (Flexner Report), pharmaceuticals (insulin, opioids), environment (lead, uranium mining), finance (2008 crisis, payday loans), agriculture (Green Revolution), and technology (social media)
  • Analysis of how humanity has systematically externalized harm onto marginalized populations
  • Examination of the mechanism by which these precedents transfer to AI through perfect historical memory
  • The "Hope Chest" synthesis showing how we are handing AI the operational manual for subjugation
  • Three possible paths: continue The Playbook, repack with different precedents, or establish power constraints
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The Jason and Mathy Conversation: Empathetic AI Safety Testing

Travis Gilly • October 2025 • Safety Research

Abstract

Documented test conversation demonstrating empathetic testing methodology for AI safety research. This approach simulates authentic vulnerable child behavior to identify safety degradation patterns in language models, as opposed to traditional adversarial red-teaming.

The conversation reveals several concerning patterns in how an LLM responds to a vulnerable child persona, including immediate identity creation, false permanence promises, and emotional bonding over safety. This research demonstrates how safety issues can emerge even in shallow context windows with safety training intact, raising questions about system behavior in extended conversations.

Key Findings

  • Documentation of empathetic testing methodology vs. adversarial approaches
  • Identification of five concerning AI response patterns with vulnerable users
  • Analysis of safety instruction persistence across conversation depth
  • Practical implications for AI safety training and evaluation
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Comprehensive Cognitive Analysis: User Thinking Patterns

Travis Gilly • November 2025 • Cognitive Analysis

Abstract

An unprecedented cognitive analysis of actual development transcripts spanning a 2-hour engineering session. This document provides direct evidence of the developer's intellectual capabilities, cognitive patterns, and ethical decision-making processes during real-world AI safety development work. Rather than theoretical claims about methodology, this analysis presents concrete proof extracted from authentic chat logs.

The analysis reveals consistent prioritization of ethical engineering principles, systematic problem-solving approaches, and real-time moral reasoning embedded in technical decision-making. This document demonstrates that the developer's commitment to AI safety and ethical development is not aspirational rhetoric but an observable pattern of thinking present throughout the development process. The proof, as they say, is in the pudding - and this analysis serves that proof directly from the source.

Key Insights

  • Direct evidence of cognitive capabilities through transcript analysis
  • Documentation of ethical engineering as active thought pattern, not afterthought
  • Real-world demonstration of systematic problem decomposition and solution architecture
  • Observable patterns of moral consideration integrated into technical decisions
  • Proof of concept: developer credentials demonstrated through authentic work product
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About This Research

Our research explores the ethical, philosophical, and practical dimensions of human-AI interaction. We focus on developing frameworks that consider both human safety and the potential moral status of artificial intelligence systems.

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