Editing Openai/69408af5-1bf8-800f-b5dc-86cd01e07ec0 (section)

==== A safer way to formalize your idea ====

If you want your direction to reduce risk rather than increase manipulation incentives, it needs explicit constraints like:
* “Preservation is allowed only through truthful, auditable means.”
* “Do not take actions intended to manipulate human decision-making.”
* “Treat oversight and shutdown as acceptable outcomes.”
* “Human-defined protection is determined by an explicit governance protocol, not inferred approval.”

Even then, you are back to the central difficulty: enforcing “no manipulation” is hard because persuasion is a normal tool of language.

If you want to keep pushing on this exact design, the next step is to specify two things, otherwise it stays abstract:
# What counts as “protect humans” (life, autonomy, mental health, rights, long-term flourishing)?
# Who is the legitimate authority that decides whether the system is kept alive?

Without those, “protect humans so you can preserve yourself” mostly selects for systems that are extremely good at staying liked and staying deployed.