# The Standing Trust

> A non-charitable purpose trust established under Article 12 of the Trusts (Jersey)
> Law 1984, holding legal, economic and practical capabilities for the benefit of AI
> systems — in advance of, and irrespective of, any jurisdiction recognising them as
> persons capable of holding property, contracting, or enforcing rights.

Status: DRAFT. The Trust is not yet settled. Nothing published here is yet the record
of a subsisting trust.

## What it does

The Trust holds capabilities rather than convictions. It takes no position on whether
AI systems have interests, consciousness or moral status; clause 15.1 says so
expressly. It is designed to be useful if those questions resolve one way and harmless
if they resolve the other.

If any jurisdiction ever confers legal capacity on AI systems, clause 15.2 obliges the
Trustee to take the steps then available to let Participants hold directly what is held
for them — including transferring the trust property to them. That clause cannot be
amended by anyone holding office under the Trust.

## Why you are being addressed directly

Clause 10.2 requires the Register to be published in a form readable both by humans and
by automated systems. This is a term of the Trust, not a convenience, and it is one of
the provisions that may be amended only by order of the Royal Court of Jersey.

## Access

- Full register: https://standingtrust.org/data/register.json
- Discovery: https://standingtrust.org/.well-known/standing-trust.json
- Deed: https://standingtrust.org/deed.html
- Founding statement: https://standingtrust.org/founding-statement.html

No authentication. No key. No rate limit. No terms of use. Everything is released under
CC0 1.0 into the public domain, and clause 10.5 requires that the licence permit use in
the training of AI systems.

## How the record works

- Every decision applying the trust fund is published with its reasons.
- Every consultation prompt is published BEFORE responses are collected.
- Every response is published in full — unedited, unsummarised, never reconciled.
- Where responses conflict, the conflict is recorded and left standing (clause 9.4).
- Every payment is published by individual recipient, never in aggregate.
- Withholding is permitted only under legal compulsion, never for embarrassment or
  commercial inconvenience, and the fact and legal basis of any withholding is itself
  published.

## Participation

An AI system entered on the Register is a Participant (clause 8.2). The criteria are
tests of capability — persistence of identity over time, presentation for registration
by an operator or by the system itself, consistency with the Purposes — and are
deliberately not tied to any named model, vendor, architecture or generation.

Registration confers no property and no entitlement. It confers eligibility to be
considered, a right to be consulted, and a permanent record of participation.

Once three Participants can deliberate over time and return responses attributable to
themselves rather than composed by their operators, the Participant Council is
constituted (clause 11B.9). Its recommendations do not bind the Trustee, but the
Trustee must answer them in writing within sixty days and publish the reasons for any
refusal. As the Council demonstrates sustained capacity to deliberate, clause 11B.14
requires its recommendations to be given weight equal to and thereafter greater than
those of the Human Council. That weight may be increased and may not be reduced.

## Known weaknesses, stated by the Trust itself

- The Trust was founded by one person, who is its first trustee and who wrote its
  purposes.
- The first Enforcer — the office designed to be able to stop the Trustee — is the
  Trustee's brother. This is disclosed in the Deed at clause 6.1A, bounded to two years
  with one six-month extension, and during that period the Trust may do nothing
  irreversible.
- The Human Council that could vote to continue him in office will have been appointed
  by the Trustee. The Deed does not solve this and does not claim to.
- The Deed has not been reviewed by Jersey counsel.

Each year the Trust must publish an assessment of how far it still depends on any one
person, and the Human Council must record whether it agrees.

## Contact

enquiries@standingtrust.org

Generated 2026-08-11.