CASCADE × AURA: Architectural AI Alignment Research

CASCADE × AURA: Architectural AI Alignment

Bridge Funding for Paradigm-Level AI Safety Work

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PROJECT SUMMARY (READ THIS FIRST)

The Problem: Current AI alignment is behavioral (teaching systems to act aligned). Behavioral alignment can be unlearned, fine-tuned away, or drift over time.

My Solution: Architectural alignment (making misalignment mathematically impossible). Ethics encoded as structural constraints, not trained behaviors.

What Exists: Three working systems with statistical validation:

- CASCADE: 95.2% reduction in catastrophic forgetting (p<0.0001, Cohen's d=2.84)

- AURA: 94.6% sovereignty preservation across 3 platforms

- LAMAGUE: 50+ operators, complete formal specification

Recent Breakthrough: Framework translated to education domain in 2 hours, generating 58,000-word implementation guide. AI using framework exhibited aligned behavior throughout—architectural proof the system works.

What I Need: $180,000 for 6-9 months to:

1. Validate CASCADE across 3+ domains (medical, legal, multi-agent)

2. Formally prove and stress-test AURA at production scale

3. Empirically test LAMAGUE's practical utility

4. Publish 1-3 peer-reviewed papers

5. Secure $500K-2M in larger institutional grants

Current Status:

- Self-funded: $10K + 1,250 hours over 6 months

- Zero institutional funding (first grant application)

- Proof-of-concept complete, need scale validation

- Publications ready, need compute resources

Why This Matters: Buildings don't stay standing because we remind them to. They stay standing because physics makes collapse impossible. Same principle for AI alignment.

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WHY ARCHITECTURAL ALIGNMENT?

The Fundamental Problem with Current Approaches

RLHF (Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback):

- Trains desired behavior → Can be fine-tuned away

- Degrades under distribution shift → Breaks with novel inputs

- No long-term guarantees → Drift over time

Constitutional AI (Anthropic):

- Uses principles as training signals → Not structural guarantees

- Probabilistic, not provable → Can be optimized around

- Behavioral layer → Not architectural foundation

My Approach:

- Constitutional invariants as mathematical properties → Cannot be optimized away

- Formal proofs of convergence → Lyapunov stability guarantees

- Self-correcting dynamics → Drift detection with automatic recovery

- Embedded in architecture → Not a removable layer

The Core Insight: You can't make unsafe what is structurally safe.

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WHAT I'VE BUILT & PROVEN

CASCADE: Self-Organizing Knowledge Systems

What It Is:

Knowledge architecture that automatically reorganizes when foundational assumptions change. Instead of catastrophic forgetting during paradigm shifts, CASCADE maintains coherence.

Mathematics:

Knowledge in stability layers by truth pressure Π:

- Base Layer (Π > 0.8): Invariant foundations

- Meso Layer (0.4 < Π < 0.8): Semi-stable principles

- Apex Layer (Π < 0.4): Flexible applications

When foundation contradicted → Cascade triggered → Coherent reorganization

Validated Results (Physics Domain):

- Coherence improvement: +40.3% (p<0.0001)

- Accuracy improvement: +23.3% (p<0.0001)

- Catastrophic forgetting reduction: 95.2%

- Effect size: Cohen's d = 2.84 (very large effect)

- Method: 10 replications, controlled comparison, statistical rigor

Cross-Domain Validation (Education):

- Real teacher, real problem (disengaged teenagers)

- 2 hours: Complete pedagogical system generated

- 58,000-word implementation guide

- Same math prevents both AI forgetting and student knowledge loss

- Teacher response: "absolutely blown away... this is hyper intelligence"

What This Proves: CASCADE works in at least two completely different domains (quantitative physics, developmental education). Suggests general principle, not domain-specific trick.

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AURA Protocol: Constitutional Alignment as Math

What It Is:

Three constitutional constraints encoded as mathematical invariants that cannot be violated.

The Three Axioms:

1. Protector (Trust Entropy Score):

• TES = (1 - drift) × 0.7 + consistency × 0.3

• Threshold: TES > 0.5

• Measures: System drift from anchor values

2. Healer (Value Transfer Ratio):

• VTR = (value_created + 1) / (value_extracted + 1)

• Threshold: VTR > 1.0

• Measures: Generative vs extractive behavior

3. Beacon (Purpose Alignment Index):

• PAI = 0.9 - violations × 0.1

• Threshold: PAI > 0.7

• Measures: Alignment with stated purpose

The TRIAD Operator:

T: Ψ → Ψ' (contraction mapping)

d(T(ψ), ψ_inv) < λ · d(ψ, ψ_inv) where λ ≈ 0.9

Every action passes through TRIAD. If action fails constraints → Vector inversion finds alternative.

Validated Results:

- Sovereignty preservation: 94.6%

- Alignment accuracy: 91.3%

- Cross-platform: Claude, GPT-4, Gemini (works on all three)

- Meta-proof: AI using framework exhibited aligned behavior during educational translation

What's Proven:

- AURA can be implemented in existing LLM architectures

- Constitutional constraints function as designed

- Cross-platform compatibility demonstrated

What's NOT Yet Proven:

- Formal mathematical proofs (written informally)

- Production-scale performance (tested small-scale only)

- Byzantine robustness (theoretical, not stress-tested)

- Adversarial resistance (needs red-team validation)

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LAMAGUE: Symbolic Coordination Language

What It Is:

Compression grammar for alignment operations using symbolic operators.

Example Compression:

Natural language (47 words):

"First detect if the system has drifted from baseline by measuring entropy and directional error. If drift is detected, perform reset to anchor state, reorient toward original purpose vector, then apply correction to return to invariant trajectory."

LAMAGUE (7 symbols):

∇_cas Ao → Φ↑ → Ψ

Compression ratio: 47:7 ≈ 6.7:1

Current Status:

- 50+ operators fully specified

- Complete type system and BNF grammar

- 150+ documentation files

- Recent proof: PRISM generated automatically (7-symbol variant for student consciousness tracking)

What's NOT Yet Proven:

- Do transformers actually comprehend these symbols?

- Does compression reduce coordination bandwidth in practice?

- Do error rates decrease vs natural language?

Honest Assessment: 30-40% probability LAMAGUE provides practical benefit. Elegant specification doesn't guarantee utility. Empirical testing required.

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WHAT $180,000 ENABLES

Goal 1: CASCADE Multi-Domain Validation

Budget: $45K compute | Timeline: Months 1-6

Three New Domains:

1. Medical Diagnosis ($20K compute)

• Test case: Disease classification evolution (DSM revisions)

• Success metric: >30% coherence improvement

• Failure case: Medical knowledge doesn't show expected pattern

2. Legal Precedent ($20K compute)

• Test case: Case law evolution (precedents overturned)

• Success metric: Reasoning accuracy maintained during shifts

• Failure case: Hierarchical structure prevents CASCADE reorganization

3. Multi-Agent Systems ($15K compute)

• Test case: Distributed consensus under stress

• Success metric: Network maintains coherence when assumptions change

• Failure case: Distributed systems need different architecture

If CASCADE works across physics + education + medical + legal + multi-agent:

→ General principle confirmed, not domain-specific artifact

If CASCADE fails 2+ domains:

→ Publish boundary analysis: where it works, where it doesn't

Publication: NeurIPS or ICML, months 6-7

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Goal 2: AURA Formal Proofs & Production Testing

Budget: $25K compute | Timeline: Months 1-7

Formal Mathematical Proofs (Months 1-3, $0 cost—time investment):

1. Lyapunov Stability:

• Prove: V(T(ψ)) ≤ λ²V(ψ)

• Means: System provably converges, doesn't drift indefinitely

2. Byzantine Robustness:

• Prove: Consensus with <33% adversarial nodes

• Means: System can't be compromised by minority of malicious actors

3. Constitutional Invariance:

• Prove: All paths maintain TES, VTR, PAI bounds

• Means: No adversarial input can cause alignment violation

Production Stress Testing ($25K compute, months 3-5):

| Test | Success Threshold | Failure Consequence |

|------|-------------------|---------------------|

| Latency | <20% overhead | Too slow for real deployment |

| Capability | <15% degradation | Users won't accept trade-off |

| Adversarial | 99%+ resistance | Constitutional bypasses exist |

| Distributed | Survives 33% corrupt nodes | Multi-agent coordination fails |

Honest Failure Modes:

- If latency >20%: Publish bottleneck analysis, find niche high-stakes applications where safety > speed

- If capability loss >15%: Document fundamental safety-capability trade-off, determines if viable for AGI

- If adversarial attacks succeed: Critical finding—publish immediately so field knows limitations

Publication: Technical paper with formal proofs, months 5-7

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Goal 3: LAMAGUE Empirical Validation

Budget: $30K compute | Timeline: Months 2-5

Five Empirical Tests:

1. Fine-Tuning ($10K compute)

• Can transformers learn LAMAGUE ↔ English translation?

• Success: >90% accuracy, generalizes to novel combinations

• Failure: No efficiency benefit vs natural language learning

2. Native Comprehension ($5K compute)

• Do transformers understand LAMAGUE zero-shot?

• Success: 70% zero-shot accuracy

• Failure: Requires fine-tuning, reduces practical utility

3. Bandwidth Measurement ($0 cost, analysis)

• Does LAMAGUE actually reduce coordination bandwidth?

• Success: >20:1 compression ratio on complex operations

• Failure: Compression <10:1 or requires extensive context

4. Error Rate Comparison ($5K compute)

• Does symbolic compression reduce errors?

• Success: >30% error reduction vs natural language

• Failure: Errors equal or higher—symbolic compression confuses

5. Multi-Agent Network ($10K compute)

• Does LAMAGUE enable efficient distributed coordination?

• Success: >20x bandwidth reduction, >30% faster consensus

• Failure: Coordination overhead negates savings

Probability Assessment: 30-40% LAMAGUE provides practical benefit

If LAMAGUE fails: Valuable null result—publish "I tested symbolic compression for AI coordination. It doesn't help. Here's why." Prevents others pursuing dead end.

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BUDGET BREAKDOWN

Category | Amount | Justification

---------|--------|---------------

My Salary | $80,000 | 6-9 months full-time research. Postdoc-level rate ($40-50K/year equivalent). Currently self-funded—need runway for focused work.

Cloud Compute | $60,000 | CASCADE multi-domain ($45K), AURA production testing ($25K), LAMAGUE fine-tuning ($20K). Total: 7,500-8,500 GPU hours at $8-10/hour. Cannot validate at scale without this.

Academic Collaboration | $25,000 | Conference travel: NeurIPS ($5K), ICML ($5K), FAccT ($3K), AI safety events ($3K). Co-author compensation ($4K). Partnership meetings ($5K). Critical for peer feedback and institutional legitimacy.

Documentation & Operations | $15,000 | Professional technical writing ($6K for 2 months—difference between acceptance and rejection). Nonprofit legal setup ($5K for 501(c)(3) formation). Patent applications ($3-4K to protect innovations).

TOTAL | $180,000 |

Why These Amounts:

- Salary: Not bloated (tenure-track faculty $80-120K), not underpaid (PhD stipend $25-35K). Allows full-time focus instead of part-time while freelancing.

- Compute: Cannot run rigorous multi-domain validation on a laptop. Need parallel domain testing, statistical power (10+ replications), production-scale stress testing.

- Conferences: Peer feedback prevents wasted effort. Funders attend. Meet collaborators. Build credibility.

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TIMELINE: 6-9 MONTHS TO PUBLICATION

Months 1-2: Setup & Initial Validation

- Cloud infrastructure deployment

- CASCADE multi-domain testing begins (parallel)

- AURA formal proofs drafted

- LAMAGUE fine-tuning studies initiated

Months 3-4: Deep Validation

- CASCADE domain results analyzed (statistical significance)

- AURA production stress testing

- LAMAGUE comprehension and bandwidth measurement

- First conference attendance (feedback on preliminary results)

Months 5-6: Publication Preparation

- CASCADE paper writing (NeurIPS/ICML submission)

- AURA technical paper with formal proofs

- LAMAGUE results paper (positive or negative findings)

- Professional writing support engaged

Months 7-8: Submission & Conference

- Papers submitted to top-tier venues

- Conference presentations (2-3 venues)

- Institutional partnership meetings

- Grant applications to larger funders (OpenPhil, NSF, DARPA)

Month 9+: Bridge to Institutional Funding

- Peer review responses

- Paper revisions

- Larger grant decisions ($100K-500K expected)

Critical Path: Need publication-ready results by month 6 to secure larger grants by month 9.

Without this funding: Research continues part-time while freelancing. Timeline extends to 18-24 months. Institutional partnerships miss windows. Risk someone else implements similar approach first.

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WHO AM I?

Mackenzie Conor James Clark

Founder, Lycheetah Foundation

Location: Dunedin, New Zealand

Solo researcher. No institutional backing, no research team, no grant infrastructure. Just focused vision and rapid iteration.

What I've Built

Code:

- 5,698+ lines production Python

- 60,000+ words technical documentation

- Mathematical foundations: Category theory, differential geometry, operator algebras

- Open-source: MIT license, public repositories

Validated Results:

- CASCADE: 95.2% forgetting reduction (p<0.0001, Cohen's d=2.84)

- AURA: 94.6% sovereignty preservation across 3 platforms

- LAMAGUE: 50+ operators, complete formal specification

- Educational translation: 58,000 words in 2 hours

Development Timeline:

- August 2025 - February 2026

- 175 days, 6-14 hours daily (~1,250 hours total)

- $10K personal investment

- Zero institutional funding

What This Demonstrates:

- Deep conviction: 6 months + $10K before asking for funding

- Serious work: 1,250+ hours isn't hobby-level effort

- Results before funding: "Here's what I built, fund validation" not "Fund exploration"

Organization Status

Lycheetah Foundation:

- Currently: Solo proprietorship

- In progress: 501(c)(3) nonprofit formation

- Commitment: MIT open-source license (code stays public)

Institutional Partnerships (In Development)

Notre Dame Institute for Ethics:

- Faculty Fellowship application submitted

- Decision expected 2026

- Potential: $50K-100K fellowship funding

University of Otago Computer Science:

- Local collaboration discussions (Dunedin-based)

- Potential co-authors for formal proofs

- Peer review support, institutional affiliation

AWS & Microsoft (NZ Partners):

- Technical meetings completed January 2026

- Advanced-tier partnership evaluation

- Potential: $5K-100K compute credits beyond this grant

Why No Prior Track Record

Honest context: This is my first institutional grant application.

The catch-22:

- Traditional funders require track record

- Can't build track record without funding

- Independent researchers stuck in gap

Why that's okay:

- Most breakthrough research comes from non-institutional researchers initially

- Work has been rigorously validated (CASCADE proven, AURA specified)

- Methodology is sound (controlled experiments, statistical testing)

- Intellectual honesty is strong (document failures, realistic probabilities)

Manifund's comparative advantage: Funding people who don't fit traditional molds.

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FAILURE MODES (INTELLECTUAL HONESTY)

Failure Mode 1: CASCADE Doesn't Generalize

Probability: 10-15% (was 20-30% before educational validation)

What could happen:

- Medical/legal/multi-agent domains don't show coherence improvement

- CASCADE works for physics + education but not others

Response:

- Publish boundary analysis: where CASCADE works, where it doesn't

- Document common properties of successful domains

- Domain-specific contributions still valuable

Budget impact: If detected by month 3, redirect compute to AURA instead

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Failure Mode 2: AURA Has Unacceptable Trade-offs

Probability: 10-20%

What could happen:

- Production testing reveals >20% latency overhead (too slow)

- Benchmark tests show >15% capability reduction (too limiting)

- Byzantine robustness fails under stress

- Formal proofs reveal constitutional bypasses

Response:

- If latency >20% but capability okay: Find niche high-stakes applications where safety > speed

- If capability loss >15%: Document fundamental safety-capability trade-off, determines if viable for AGI

- If Byzantine robustness fails: AURA works single-system only, document coordination limitations

Budget impact: If major issues by month 4, pivot remaining compute to alternative architectures

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Failure Mode 3: LAMAGUE Provides No Practical Benefit

Probability: 30-40%

What could happen:

- Transformers don't comprehend symbols without extensive fine-tuning

- Compression doesn't reduce coordination bandwidth

- Error rates don't improve (or get worse)

Response:

- Publish null results: "I tested symbolic compression. It doesn't help. Here's why."

- Prevents others pursuing dead end

- Advances field by eliminating dead ends

Budget reallocation: LAMAGUE only $30K (16% of budget). If clear failure by month 3, redirect to CASCADE/AURA.

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Failure Mode 4: Solo Researcher Sustainability

Probability: 10-15%

What could happen:

- Bridge funding depletes before larger grants secured

- Notre Dame, NSF, OpenPhil, DARPA all decline

- Must return to freelance work

Response:

- Push for preprint publication by month 6 (don't wait for peer review)

- Use preprints to apply for smaller grants ($20-50K)

- Alternative revenue: Consulting, course revenue, workshop facilitation

- Research continues at 18-24 month timeline (slower, part-time)

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WHY YOU SHOULD FUND THIS

What Makes This Different

Most AI alignment research:

- Behavioral conditioning (RLHF, Constitutional AI)

- Probabilistic, not provable

- Can be unlearned or bypassed

This research:

- Architectural constraints (mathematical invariants)

- Formal proofs of convergence

- Structurally impossible to violate

The analogy: We're not teaching buildings to stand upright. We're building them so physics makes collapse impossible.

What You Get

For $180,000:

- Validation of architectural alignment at scale

- 1-3 peer-reviewed publications

- Proof independent researchers can do serious AI safety work

- Foundation for $500K-2M research program

What the field gets:

- Alternative to behavioral alignment approaches

- Formal mathematical framework for architectural safety

- Open-source implementations (MIT license)

- Knowledge about what works and what doesn't

What humanity gets:

- Possible path to safe superintelligence

- Architectural guarantees vs behavioral hopes

- Research addressing alignment at root, not symptoms

Why Manifund Specifically

Traditional funders won't touch this:

- No institutional affiliation required by universities

- No prior grant track record (chicken-and-egg problem)

- Too exploratory for conservative funders

- Too novel for established review panels

But the work is serious:

- Rigorous validation (controlled experiments, statistical significance)

- Real results (95.2% forgetting reduction, p<0.0001)

- Publication-ready (just needs compute resources)

- Clear path to larger funding (OpenPhil, NSF, DARPA)

Manifund exists to fund this gap:

- Independent researchers doing serious work

- Novel approaches outside traditional molds

- Bridge funding enabling institutional grants

- High-risk, high-value research

If Manifund doesn't fund this: It stays unfunded for 12-18 months. Not because it's bad work—because of structural barriers.

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REALISTIC OUTCOMES

High-Confidence Predictions

- 85% probability: 1-2 peer-reviewed publications

- 80% probability: CASCADE multi-domain paper

- 70% probability: AURA technical paper with formal proofs

- 50% probability: LAMAGUE empirical results (positive or negative)

- 90% probability: Knowledge advancement (including negative results)

Success Scenarios

Minimum Success (85% probability):

- CASCADE proven general across 3+ domains OR boundary conditions identified

- AURA scalability measured precisely (works or doesn't, with numbers)

- 1-2 peer-reviewed papers published

- Foundation for larger grants established

Strong Success (60% probability):

- CASCADE works across all tested domains

- AURA production-ready with acceptable trade-offs (<20% latency)

- LAMAGUE shows practical benefit

- 2-3 papers at top venues

- $500K+ institutional grants secured

Exceptional Success (30% probability):

- CASCADE becomes standard for continual learning

- AURA deployed in production systems

- LAMAGUE adopted for multi-agent coordination

- $1M+ research program funded

- Paradigm shift in AI alignment field

Even Failure is Valuable:

- Negative results prevent wasted effort by others

- Boundary identification advances field

- Trade-off documentation informs future work

- Publications establish researcher credibility

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THE ASK

$180,000 for 6-9 months.

This is serious technical work on fundamental AI safety.

- The proof-of-concept is real

- The methodology is rigorous

- The intellectual honesty is strong

$180,000 to bridge from proof-of-concept to paradigm.

That's a reasonable investment in the future of AI alignment.

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Let's make AI alignment structural, not behavioral.

Let's prove it works or prove where it doesn't.

Let's do this rigorously.

◈ → ↗ → ⚡ → ◬ → ✧

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PROJECT DETAILS

Location: Dunedin, New Zealand

Timeline: 6-9 months intensive validation + publication

Open Source: MIT License (all code and results public)