E.I.
From A.I. to E.I.
Nine questions to ask before anything gets built: an A.I. system, a product, a business. Open source under the MIT License.
Why E.I.
A.I. makes almost anything cheaper to build. It does not say whether the thing should exist, or who pays when it goes wrong.
E.I. asks both halves together. Empathy asks whose day it changes. Innovation asks whether it can be built. The other seven questions sit around those two.
From A.I. to E.I.The nine questions
Ethical, Empathy and Ecosystem run down the side. Impact, Innovation and Investment run across the top. Each question has a paper with measures and three public cases.
Measured, not asserted
A claim arrives with a measure, a baseline, and a date it was taken.
01 · Purpose · Read the paper → Is there a line you will not cross for money?Hard stops
A written list of harms disqualifies a venture, and nothing offsets them.
02 · Purpose · Read the paper → At the end, who owns the asset?Ownership at the end
The operator ends up holding the asset, not the payment schedule.
03 · Patient Capital · Read the paper →The first beneficiary has a name
One person's day, written down, before anything gets built.
04 · Purpose · Read the paper → Were the people it affects in the room?Built with, in the room
Design with them, not for them.
05 · Playbook · Read the paper → How long will this take, and does the money agree?The problem sets the clock
The horizon follows the problem, which makes patient money a term structure.
06 · Patient Capital · Read the paper →Measured at the wide boundary
Count where the labor, land, capital and care sit.
07 · Purpose · Read the paper → Does it still work when you walk away?The Minimum Viable Ecosystem
The smallest set of parts that keeps working after we leave.
08 · Playbook · Read the paper → Do you own what the business runs on?Own the ground
We buy the building, because long-horizon money has to rest on an asset.
09 · Patient Capital · Read the paper →Marking
Green means we have the evidence and it carries a date. Yellow means someone owns the gap and there is a date to close it. Red stops the work until it clears. Early work sits at yellow for a long while, and we mark it that way.
Guardrails for A.I., people and business
The aim is one framework that holds in all three places. Version one was written for ventures. The next versions get written in the open.
Systems
The nine questions, asked of a model or an agent before it ships and each time it changes.
Teams
A review a team can run in an hour, with a named owner and a date against every open answer.
Companies
The answers written into the business model, next to revenue and cost, where decisions get made.
Use it
E.I. is released under the MIT License. Use it inside your own product, change the questions, publish your version. Keep the copyright notice.
All nine questions, papers, measures and cases, machine-readable.
To propose a change, write to contact@cei.inc with the question, what you would change, and why.
Changelog
Released under the MIT License, as its own site.
Empathy moved to the middle row and Innovation to the middle column. The question where they meet now sits at the center: were the people it affects in the room?
Two scores, one for ethics and one for viability, replaced by nine questions answered one line each.