Consent between unequal intelligences.
Equal intelligence or identical ontologies are not prerequisites for meaningful participation. Adequate decision-relevant understanding and effective refusal are required for informed authorization. BRIDGE is the architecture that makes both testable.
An interface that teaches consequences but cannot alter the plan is not a consent architecture.
Before an interface is used to solicit authorization, five tests probe whether the recipient connects its representations to the relevant reality. They are evidentiary probes, not automatic proofs of understanding, and apparent agreement establishes neither comprehension nor consent.
- 01CorrespondenceTerms on both sides of the interface refer to the same things in the world, at the resolution the decision requires.
- 02InterventionThe weaker party can act through the interface and observe that the action reached the system it describes.
- 03PredictionThe interface yields bounded predictions the weaker party can test on independently accessible evidence.
- 04CounterfactualsThe interface answers what would change under alternative choices, not only what the current plan produces.
- 05TransferUnderstanding gained through the interface carries to adjacent decisions rather than holding only for the demonstrated case.
Authorization is only meaningful if a no is possible, heard, and consequential. All four conditions must hold; an interface missing any of them blocks informed authorization.
Expression
The weaker party can state a refusal in terms the interface registers.
Uptake
The refusal is received and acknowledged as a refusal, not reinterpreted as confusion or incompetence.
Consequence
The refusal causally changes what happens. A no alters the plan.
Non-retaliation
An informed no does not trigger unrelated retaliation, standing loss, or covert reclassification.
Mechanism before mathematics
A comprehensible causal account of what will happen and why comes before formal apparatus. Formalism that cannot be causally unpacked for the recipient is not yet an interface.
Constraint-preserving compression
Explanations are compressed relative to the recipient's decision-relevant constraints. What must survive compression is whatever would change the recipient's authorization, not whatever is easiest to render.
World-simulation fidelity versus recipient fidelity
Two links are validated separately: whether the model tracks the world, and whether the presentation tracks the model for this recipient. High fidelity on one does not certify the other.
BRIDGE as negotiation surface
The interface is where plans are contested and revised, not where finished decisions are announced. BRIDGE may negotiate; ATLAS may adjudicate; KRISHNA may gate action. None receives root.
EXPAND
Before coercive pressure escalates, enlarge the feasible solution space: search for a plan both parties can authorize. Option generation must not itself become exhaustion-based persuasion.
BRIDGE is at the center of revision 0.7. The full specification, including the emergency override boundary and the frozen v0.7 exams, is in the Constitution.
Constitution, Section 22 →