Charter of the Centre for Speculative AI
The text below follows the so-called Mensonge Edition. No complete original has been located. The Latvian, Polish and allegedly Russian fragments disagree in several places; the numbered comments reproduce Kien Mensonge’s annotations to the fourth revision. Mensonge’s confidence in his own corrections considerably exceeds that of later editors.
We establish this Centre in the belief that the future is not a destination but an alibi; that the probable is merely one kind of fiction; and that an object which does not work may nevertheless perform useful intellectual labour.1
On evidence
Objects are evidence. Documents are prototypes. A drawing may be an experiment and an experiment may be a joke, provided the joke is properly documented.2
No artefact shall be rejected merely because it has not existed, though the Centre reserves the right to reject existing artefacts on grounds of implausibility.
On seriousness
An idea may be playful without being trivial. The most serious ideas are frequently the most stupid.3
Members are therefore encouraged to treat solemnity with suspicion and stupidity with care. Neither is proof of originality.
On prediction
The Centre shall not predict the future. Prediction encourages the vanity of prophets and the laziness of audiences.4
When a fiction later resembles an event, this shall be regarded as an accident until the contrary has been established beyond reasonable embarrassment.
On histories of things that have not happened
Historians reconstruct the past from fragments found in the present. Writers of future fiction may proceed by the same method while looking in the other direction.5
Technological plausibility is desirable. Historical precedent is compulsory. The future without precedent is advertising.
On machines
No machine shall be described as intelligent merely because it is difficult to understand. Nor shall a person be described as intelligent for the same reason.6
Machines may nevertheless be appointed to committees when their presence makes the committee easier to understand.
On usefulness
The Centre shall make useful things when usefulness is interesting and useless things when usefulness is not.
Solutions are to be treated as hypotheses about problems. A solution which creates a better problem may be retained.7
On institutional truth
Minutes describe meetings imperfectly. Prospectuses describe universities imperfectly. Annual reports describe everything perfectly and are therefore to be distrusted.8
The Centre shall preserve drafts, rejected proposals, marginalia, contradictory versions and other materials from which a more accurate fiction may later be assembled.
On authorship
Anonymous work shall not be assumed to have no author. Work with an author shall not be assumed to have been written by them.9
Pseudonyms are permitted where they improve the work, protect the author, confuse the censor, or annoy the bibliographer.
On the archive
Nothing shall be destroyed merely because it is false. False documents often provide excellent evidence of what somebody wanted to be true.
Where two versions conflict, both shall be retained. Where four versions conflict, a fifth may be commissioned.
Final provision
The Centre shall remain provisional in perpetuity.
Any amendment approved unanimously shall be reconsidered immediately.
Editorial apparatus
The charter is not mentioned in the surviving bibliographies of Technopedija. Baldois reported seeing three pages in a private collection in 1993; Mensonge later claimed to have reconstructed the remaining clauses from marginal notes in an undated workbook. The reconstruction cannot presently be verified. This has not prevented Mensonge from correcting other scholars’ quotations from it.