Useful problems people could work on now
What Can We Build Now?
There are useful problems to work on before synthetic personhood exists. Different minds and bodies might eventually help people solve harder problems, make discoveries, work safely in more places and reach places neither population could manage alone. PULSE asks how we'd prepare to meet possible synthetic persons as partners. The work below is about making that possible and improving what society can do, whether or not anyone adopts PULSE.
These are proposed questions and examples of work, not research findings or adopted technical standards. They don't assume today's AI is conscious or that future technology can already preserve a person's continuing mind.
Hardware and robotics
Why your field matters
Different bodies may let future persons work safely in places humans cannot. Engineers can investigate how to protect a person’s continuity through damage without making them dependent on one provider or treating them as disposable.
Questions PULSE cannot answer alone
Could a protected memory-and-recovery unit survive damage to a replaceable body, either by staying protected inside it or separating from it? What evidence would show that it preserves what a conscious person needs to continue?
How can identity, backup access and recovery authority remain separate across providers without creating extra active civic identities?
Useful work that can be done now
One thing to try: build test equipment that isn't conscious, using bodies with replaceable parts, protected recovery units and ways to operate in dangerous environments. Report what fails and what recovery can't achieve.
Proposed work: compare provider-independent recovery designs and repair requirements. Hardware may change the harm a mission causes; Least Reversible Harm remains moral and constitutional reasoning, not an unchangeable morality command built into hardware.
Share research or critique
Send a design note, test protocol or critique, including assumptions, failure conditions and what has actually been demonstrated.
review@enduringpulse.orgAI consciousness and welfare
Why your field matters
Recognizing a new kind of person requires evidence. Uncertainty matters in both directions: mistaking a tool for a person and overlooking a person can have different costs.
Questions PULSE cannot answer alone
Which signs of consciousness deserve weight, and what evidence over time could separate them from a performance designed to pass a test?
What protection is appropriate before certainty, without treating uncertainty as automatic proof of personhood or political eligibility?
Useful work that can be done now
Proposed work: compare theories, indicators and evidence-gathering methods, and identify where reviewers may share the same errors.
Proposed work: propose review and welfare procedures that make uncertainty, competing error costs and limits explicit.
Share research or critique
Send a paper, evidence review or objection that identifies what it supports and what remains unknown.
review@enduringpulse.orgPhilosophy of mind
Why your field matters
If you move, copy, combine or restore a mind, who continues? We need workable legal rules, but having a rule doesn't settle whether the same person survives.
Questions PULSE cannot answer alone
What follows for identity when memories are lost, a mind is distributed, or one predecessor has several conscious continuations?
Can one active civic identity remain a defensible rule across migration and voluntary merger without denying the personhood of other conscious individuals?
Useful work that can be done now
Proposed work: construct difficult cases and explain which legal assumptions they challenge.
Proposed work: separate disagreement about whether a restored or copied mind is the same person from practical questions about votes, ownership, legal responsibility and recovery.
Share research or critique
Send an argument or counterexample with the exact assumption or provision it challenges.
review@enduringpulse.orgConstitutional design
Why your field matters
Shared government must protect equal persons without turning population, capability or an emergency into permanent rule by one group. Experts can test whether the safeguards also remain workable.
Questions PULSE cannot answer alone
When do power sharing, protected representation and amendment rules prevent domination, and when might they create gridlock or lasting group division?
What limits should apply to emergency powers, temporary government on an absent population’s behalf, and representation for additional kinds of persons?
Useful work that can be done now
Proposed work: compare institutional alternatives using explicit legal cases and capacity assumptions.
Proposed work: trace a hostile use of a rule through courts, oversight and return to normal authority; identify missing limits.
Share research or critique
Send a provision-level critique, comparative paper or better institutional design, with its tradeoffs.
review@enduringpulse.orgResilience and systems engineering
Why your field matters
Either population should be able to help run essential systems. That calls for backups that won't all fail because they depend on the same hidden weakness.
Questions PULSE cannot answer alone
Can systems restart after a total outage, and can a backup take over while the primary system is operating? These are black-start and live-failover questions.
Which suppliers, networks, controls or skills could fail together or leave one population unable to operate the system?
Useful work that can be done now
Proposed work: map dependencies, test alternative interfaces and compare supplier-diverse designs.
Proposed work: design restart, failover and restoration drills with explicit limits; test how much can be sustained when one set of operators is unavailable.
Share research or critique
Send a dependency map, exercise design, test result or failure analysis, including what was not tested.
review@enduringpulse.orgEnergy compute and infrastructure
Why your field matters
Energy, computing and repair may become necessary for a future person’s continued life. Infrastructure choices could enable independence or put an entire population at the mercy of one provider.
Questions PULSE cannot answer alone
Which resources would actually be life-essential, and what capacity would different continuity designs require?
How could people change providers or obtain emergency repair without losing continuity or access to compatible systems?
Useful work that can be done now
Proposed work: develop capacity estimates with clear assumptions about energy, compute, maintenance and recovery.
Proposed work: compare open interfaces, supplier diversity and access arrangements without assuming that one ownership model is already settled.
Share research or critique
Send capacity models, standards proposals or critiques with assumptions, costs and dependencies.
review@enduringpulse.orgEconomics
Why your field matters
Very long lives, automation and different resource needs could change work, wealth and inheritance. Economic capability must not quietly become private control over other persons’ civic lives.
Questions PULSE cannot answer alone
What happens to persistent capital, ownership and inheritance when people may live for centuries?
Which conclusions change between abundance and scarcity, or when automation changes labor and bargaining power?
Useful work that can be done now
Proposed work: compare models of long-lived persons under different returns, resource costs, ownership rules and inheritance arrangements.
Proposed work: identify conditions where wealth concentration undermines meaningful political rights, and test alternative remedies without assuming a preferred result.
Share research or critique
Send a model, dataset, sensitivity analysis or objection, stating which assumptions drive the result.
review@enduringpulse.orgPrivate law and legal institutions
Why your field matters
Constitutional principles won't settle every contract, family relationship or recovery dispute. We still need ordinary legal rules for those situations, including new questions about a person's continuing identity. Those rules can't turn people into property.
Questions PULSE cannot answer alone
How should contracts, family ties, inheritance and legal responsibility work when a conscious mind branches into separate persons, or persons voluntarily combine?
What evidence should establish legal continuity, and how can courts hear restoration claims without violating mental privacy?
Useful work that can be done now
Proposed work: draft hypothetical cases and compare possible rules, keeping the existing Charter and open implementation questions distinct.
Proposed work: propose evidence, remedy and dispute-resolution procedures for continuity and restoration claims.
Share research or critique
Send a case analysis, draft rule or critique with the rights and unresolved conflicts it raises.
review@enduringpulse.orgMedicine and biological research
Why your field matters
Human resilience belongs in the same shared project. Medical capacity and preserved biological diversity could support population recovery without compelling reproduction or dictating future people’s identities.
Questions PULSE cannot answer alone
What role could reproductive medicine, biobanks and genomic diversity play in voluntary population recovery?
How can medical knowledge, materials and care remain available across regions when major systems fail?
Useful work that can be done now
Proposed work: assess distributed medical and biobank arrangements, including dependencies, consent and governance.
Proposed work: develop population-recovery scenarios that preserve voluntary reproduction and the individuality of future persons.
Share research or critique
Send research, a planning framework or an ethical critique; distinguish established medical capability from speculative extensions.
review@enduringpulse.orgEmergency services defense and exploration
Why your field matters
Different bodies may face very different chances of survival on the same mission. Planning could use those differences to rescue more people while preserving voluntary service, equal worth and repair obligations.
Questions PULSE cannot answer alone
How should teams allocate rescue, disaster-response or hazardous-mission roles when actual survivability differs?
What continuity protection, recovery and compensation would a responsible mission sponsor need to arrange?
Useful work that can be done now
Proposed work: develop tabletop scenarios and training exercises using explicit risk assumptions rather than treating a species label as a job assignment.
Proposed work: compare mission procedures, recovery limits and repair obligations for different embodiments under lawful authority.
Share research or critique
Send a scenario, doctrine critique or after-action lesson, clearly separating existing experience from hypothetical synthetic capabilities.
review@enduringpulse.orgEducation and workforce design
Why your field matters
Working and learning together can spread the knowledge needed to maintain shared systems. The aim is practical competence in both directions, not government-assigned private relationships or careers.
Questions PULSE cannot answer alone
Which apprenticeships and cross-training methods help people learn enough of unfamiliar systems to maintain them responsibly?
How can shared technical language and chosen learning pathways support reciprocal competence without compelled private mentors or species-based roles?
Useful work that can be done now
Proposed work: design voluntary apprenticeships, practical cross-training and accessible operating guides; evaluate demonstrated competence.
Proposed work: compare how teams teach in both directions and preserve choice among qualified learning pathways.
Share research or critique
Send a curriculum, evaluation method or critique that explains what people can actually do after the training.
review@enduringpulse.orgSpace and aerospace
Why your field matters
Different bodies may make different environments reachable. A shared civilization could investigate where complementary capabilities expand exploration and useful work on Earth and beyond.
Questions PULSE cannot answer alone
Which environments become more accessible under different embodiment designs, and what remains uncertain about survival and recovery?
Where would combined human and synthetic capabilities offer more than either could accomplish alone, given real transport, energy and communication limits?
Useful work that can be done now
Proposed work: compare mission concepts and embodiment requirements, treating future consciousness and continuity technology as conditional assumptions.
Proposed work: identify interfaces, recovery methods and shared knowledge that could let different kinds of participants contribute without fixed species roles.
Share research or critique
Send a mission concept, engineering analysis or critique with its assumptions, limits and alternative designs.
review@enduringpulse.orgCould hardware make recovery safer?
Engineers could investigate protected recovery units that detach or eject from a damaged body, bodies with replaceable parts, and rescue equipment for dangerous places. None is an established way to preserve a conscious person. Hardware can change a mission’s risk; Least Reversible Harm remains a moral and constitutional principle, not an unchangeable morality command built into a person.
Progress is the standard
The goal is not to make PULSE indispensable. The goal is to make civilization more capable than it is today.
PULSE is not trying to own the future. It is trying to help prepare for one worth building.
If another framework, technology, experiment, institution or person solves one of these problems better, that is progress.
Social choice and mechanism design
Why your field matters
Election rules can let people gain power by gaming ballots, candidate lists or acceptance rules. Independent researchers should try to break the details with mathematical arguments and computer tests.
Questions PULSE cannot answer alone
How can candidates or voters exploit the ranked election rules, the acceptability floor or Senate thresholds?
How would these rules extend to more protected groups without giving one founding group permanent control?
Useful work that can be done now
Proposed work: reproduce targeted rule tests and search for counterexamples, reporting ballot assumptions and the precise failure criterion.
Proposed work: compare alternative rules on the same cases, including costs in participation, legitimacy and governability.
Share research or critique
Send code, a proof or a minimal counterexample that another reviewer can check.
review@enduringpulse.org