Progress at the intersection of Live Machinery and governance processes / public administration could have significant potential upsides. I've met Murray in person, and I've been impressed by their insight on law, governance, history, collaborativeness, care, and potentialities of leveraging AI tech in this space.

Sahil recommended this work, and I'm excited by what I read in the grant application. Happy to support it, and hopeful it can generate footholds towards a more adaptable, flourishing, robust society.

This is a fascinating project.

One suggestion: I don't think we can assume that an AI system will be able to perfectly adapt principles to local contexts, so there needs to be some mechanism for feedback to flow back up the system.

[Progress update]

What progress have you made since your last update?

I have moved to part time work to dedicate one day a week to Live Governance research. My research work has now crystallised into 3 sub-projects as outlined below.

• Common Law as an Organism: I've made substantial progress towards completing a large body of work that describes common law legal systems as collectively intelligent systems. This research supports a key premise of Live Governance: by conceptualising civilisation as an organism, we can begin to envision governance approaches that transcend the trade-off between global (system-wide) and local functioning.
• Live Governance Framework: I've also made significant progress on a substantial body of work that outlines an overarching framework for understanding Live Governance. This framework will provide criteria to distinguish Live Governance interventions from conventional governance approaches, explicate threat and opportunity models within the Live Governance framing, and offer initial directions for policy development.
• Live Governance Community Tool: I have begun developing a specific proposal for an AI-enabled community level governance tool that would implement Live Governance principles within the constraints of current AI technologies. I anticipate this will help define the contours of a class of similar interventions that could be implemented at different scales and in different contexts.

What are your next steps?

I plan to continue my one-day-a-week research schedule and aim to complete these sub-projects by the end of September.

Is there anything others could help you with?

Engagement and Collaboration: I am always excited to discuss Live Governance concepts, and would be particularly excited to chat or work with someone who has interest/expertise in the common law and its intersection with philosophy of mind or AI governance.

Funding: While I can continue my current work arrangements indefinitely regardless of funding (one day a week on research, four days a week on non-AI safety work), I am time-constrained. I have several Live Governance and Live Governance-adjacent research ideas that I'm currently unable to pursue. Additional funding would allow me to devote a greater proportion of my time to this work, and I'd be happy to make this a full-time commitment.

[Progress update]

What progress have you made since your last update?

I have moved to part time work to dedicate one day a week to Live Governance research. My research work has now crystallised into 3 sub-projects as outlined below.

• Common Law as an Organism: I've made substantial progress towards completing a large body of work that describes common law legal systems as collectively intelligent systems. This research supports a key premise of Live Governance: by conceptualising civilisation as an organism, we can begin to envision governance approaches that transcend the trade-off between global (system-wide) and local functioning.
• Live Governance Framework: I've also made significant progress on a substantial body of work that outlines an overarching framework for understanding Live Governance. This framework will provide criteria to distinguish Live Governance interventions from conventional governance approaches, explicate threat and opportunity models within the Live Governance framing, and offer initial directions for policy development.
• Live Governance Community Tool: I have begun developing a specific proposal for an AI-enabled community level governance tool that would implement Live Governance principles within the constraints of current AI technologies. I anticipate this will help define the contours of a class of similar interventions that could be implemented at different scales and in different contexts.

What are your next steps?

I plan to continue my one-day-a-week research schedule and aim to complete these sub-projects by the end of September.

Is there anything others could help you with?

Engagement and Collaboration: I am always excited to discuss Live Governance concepts, and would be particularly excited to chat or work with someone who has interest/expertise in the common law and its intersection with philosophy of mind or AI governance.

Funding (for other Live Governance research): Now that I have transitioned to part-time arrangements (one day a week on research, four days a week on non-AI safety work), I am reasonably confident I can continue regardless of funding. However, I am time-constrained and have several Live Governance and Live Governance-adjacent research ideas that I'm unable to pursue. I'd like to devote a greater proportion of my time to this work and will consider dropping to 3-days a week of paid work (this is probably the fewest days' of paid work I could sustainably manage). I'd be happy to make this a full-time commitment, however, this would require funding.

[Final report]

Description of subprojects and results, including major changes from the original proposal

1. What Was Completed

The project produced two substantive published works:

• Live Governance Framework – AI tools for coordination without centralisation: mapping the core paradigm and distinguishing live, adaptive governance interventions from conventional bureaucratic approaches.
• The Internal Perspective – The Locus of Law's Normative Effect: an exploration of how law's authority derives from the bottom up through its internalisation by countless individuals with their own normative universes, rather than from top-down enforcement.

2. Reflections

The project didn't fully deliver on its original objectives. Early on I pivoted to focus more on theory and philosophy, with the plan that these would serve as foundations for more practical deliverables. This was intellectually rewarding - I now have a much clearer sense of how legal philosophy and the functioning of the common law connects to current debates in philosophy of mind and cognition. However, I underestimated the complexity and scale of the theoretical challenge, which meant I was unable to deliver the outputs I would have liked to.

Progress slowed as time went on. The biggest structural challenge was working in isolation. Early on, the novelty of the ideas was self-sustaining motivation. But without a regular community of practice or feedback loop, maintaining consistent execution became harder over time. More structure around collaboration would be valuable in future.

3. Ongoing Theoretical Work

I've developed a substantial body of exploratory drafts that I envisage forming a series framing the common law as a diverse intelligence, exploring how a legal system maintains coherent identity and purpose across centuries. The central argument is that the common law's remarkable adaptive capacity is a structural consequence of how it processes, stores, and reapplies legal wisdom through the doctrine of stare decisis. This enables lived disputes to function as a generative source of learning, the lessons of which are captured in judicial precedent and reintegrated into social reality through future application.

4. Looking Forward

I'll continue developing these ideas independently, though I'm still working out what form that takes. The core thesis feels stronger than when I started, and I consider the common law remains a uniquely fertile lens for thinking about AI governance and decentralised institutional design (precisely because it lets us study collective intelligence from the inside out). I'm grateful for the support that made this phase possible.

Spending breakdown

75 hours independent work at USD 40 per hour.