New Galicia Accord

The New Galicia Accord is a cornerstone of interstellar law and governs the creation, deployment, and limitations of artificial beings, especially those designed to replicate or replace human judgment. Signed after high-profile incidents involving autonomous machines, the Accord forbids the creation of self-aware, decision-making artificial intelligences intended to operate independently of a human overseer.

Further Detail

The line is clear: machines may assist, simulate, or execute, but they must not supplant.

Prohibited Intelligence

Under the Accord, autonomous self-aware AI is explicitly outlawed. Machines that appear too intelligent may be restricted or dismantled even if they were not designed to violate the rules. Entities known as fabricants, especially humanoid or semi-humanoid constructs, are under particular scrutiny if they show signs of independent thought or moral reasoning.

Testing and Enforcement

Testing protocols exist to detect prohibited levels of self-awareness, but enforcement is inconsistent and politicized. Even machines that are not truly sentient can be deemed too clever and classified as violations if they demonstrate behaviors resembling personhood.

Political Debate

To defenders, the New Galicia Accord is a necessary bulwark against machines replacing or undermining humanity. To critics, it is a reactionary legal chokehold used to suppress innovation, deny rights to emerging minds, and cover up uncomfortable truths about what humanity has already created.

Legal Categories

The Accord distinguishes between narrow expert systems, supervised decision tools, simulated personalities, and prohibited autonomous minds. In practice, these categories overlap. A system can become more capable through accumulation, networking, or adaptation without anyone deliberately designing a self-aware entity.

Compliance Practice

Compliance therefore focuses heavily on architecture, logging, and human override mechanisms. Developers learn to describe advanced behavior in legally safer terms, while regulators often judge public risk rather than underlying cognition.

The Personhood Problem

The Accord creates a moral contradiction around entities such as Jules, Lucia, and Arenal echoes. If they are merely software, destroying them is maintenance. If they are persons, the Accord enables imprisonment and execution without due process. Institutions prefer the first answer because the second would destabilize ownership, liability, inheritance, and labor law.