The Theia Manifesto
For AI and Emerging Technologies

Artificial intelligence (AI) and emerging technologies should expand human capability and serve the public good. Theia Institute offers these principles as a common foundation for practitioners who design, deploy, secure, and govern technology across sectors and borders.

1. Start with people and purpose.
Define the human need, the intended benefit, and who may be affected. Measure progress through outcomes for people and communities.

2. AI is a tool, not a substitute.
AI should extend human expertise, judgment, and creativity. Consequential decisions require clear human responsibility and meaningful oversight, with the information, competence, and authority to question, intervene, and seek correction.

3. Respect local values and protect human dignity.
Draw on local knowledge, languages, cultural values, and institutional realities. Involve affected communities in shaping decisions while upholding human dignity and fundamental rights.

4. Establish readiness through evidence.
Test technology for its intended use and setting. Assess benefits, foreseeable harms, and limitations. Invite scrutiny proportionate to the stakes, and revise conclusions as evidence changes.

5. Make responsibility traceable.
Identify who is accountable for design, deployment, use, and outcomes. Preserve relevant decisions and evidence, and give affected people meaningful ways to raise concerns and seek remedy.

6. Build in cybersecurity and privacy.
Protect people, data, and essential services from design through operation and retirement. Test safeguards, monitor evolving threats, and prepare to contain and recover from incidents.

7. Govern continuously and proportionately.
Match oversight to intended use, potential harm, and uncertainty. Establish authority to monitor, modify, pause, or retire systems, and revisit decisions as technology and conditions change.

8. Design for real conditions.
Account for limited infrastructure, unequal access, disruption, and differences in institutional capacity. Build systems and institutions that can adapt, recover, and maintain essential functions.

9. Cooperate to build shared capability.
Combine expertise across disciplines and borders. Share knowledge responsibly, strengthen local skills and institutions, and widen participation in shaping technology’s benefits.


Putting the principles to work

Ask: Who benefits? Who may be harmed? What evidence supports use? Who is responsible? Can people intervene? Will the system remain dependable under real conditions?

Theia invites practitioners, institutions, and communities worldwide to put these principles into practice and contribute to their continued development.

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