A standard of care for the decisions we have handed to machines.

Soma names the care an automated decision owes the person on the other side — and holds it to four duties.

It is a position, not a product or a service: a body of thought about how systems that hold power over people ought to hold it. Read it, cite it, argue with it — there is nothing to buy.

• First

  A position

  The standard, stated plainly and published in the open — the founding claim and the four duties beneath it: competence, candor, recourse, non-abandonment. Set down the way a true thing is set down, free to read and use.

• Then

  A reference

  As the writing accumulates, a position that is cited becomes a standard. Others building and governing these systems begin to point to it. Authority earned by being referenced — not by being sold.

• In time

  A commons

  A standard that matters is meant to outlive the one who wrote it — stewarded by others, an open thing held in common. Built, from the start, to be handed on.