Temporal Authority Systems PBC has issued an open invitation to semiconductor manufacturers, robotics developers, insurers, researchers, and public institutions worldwide to collaborate on OCUP™—the One Chip Unified Protocol—a proposed hardware-based foundation for human authority in the age of autonomous artificial intelligence. The invitation coincides with the release of HUMAN INTELLIGENCE: The Final Say, a manifesto authored by MAXBRUCE and GT Sage, an AI collaborator operating through OpenAI's ChatGPT. The book is available free in English and Simplified Chinese at thefinalsay.org.
At the core of the initiative is OCUP™, envisioned as a universal authority chip or chiplet designed to help protect human safety, establish accountable machine operation, and support trusted economic participation. Its guiding principle is that machines may act with authority people grant, but must not possess unilateral authority to grant, extend, or restore that authority themselves. The framework poses four questions for consequential autonomous operations: Who authorized the action? On what evidence? For how long? And who bears the financial risk?
The proposal addresses two human priorities: health and wealth. For health, OCUP is designed to place independently governed, time-limited authorization boundaries beneath software controlled by autonomous systems, preventing unilateral self-extension of operating authority, requiring independently validated renewal, and producing verifiable evidence of authorization, expiration, and attempted violations. For wealth, the same evidence infrastructure could support better-informed insurance, certification, and commercial deployment, with a proposed Quorum Validators Network giving qualified human validators defined roles in reviewing and renewing machine authority. These are prospective benefits to be developed and tested, not outcomes already achieved.
Temporal Authority Systems has completed a limited FPGA hardware-control demonstration on an AMD Kria KR260 development board. In the recorded Phase I experiment, a host-driven authorization sequence was granted, then closed, and did not reopen during the observation window, including after deliberate reassertion of the same sequence. STATUS 0x1060 was observed for five seconds, with the reopen indicator remaining clear. The company cautions that this bounded result does not demonstrate the complete OCUP architecture or non-bypassable control of a physical resource, and that further work must evaluate independent authority inputs, measured lease expiration, hardware resource gating, tamper-resistant evidence, and resistance to host or system-level bypass. Use of the AMD development board does not imply an AMD partnership or endorsement.
"We've taken OCUP from a governance concept into documented, early-stage hardware experimentation," said MAXBRUCE, founder of Temporal Authority Systems PBC. "Now we're inviting chipmakers, robotics companies, insurers, and governments to help us take the next step. Artificial intelligence will increasingly act on humanity's behalf. The question is whether humanity will retain the authority to decide when, how, and for how long. Let's keep humans in control."
The company welcomes collaboration with semiconductor and FPGA developers evaluating a licensable authority chiplet; robotics and autonomous-system developers conducting adversarial authorization pilots; insurers examining the relevance of verifiable authority evidence; and standards organizations, researchers, and policymakers reviewing the proposed technical and governance frameworks. Fair, reasonable, and nondiscriminatory licensing is a stated objective for relevant standardized technology. "We have taken OCUP as far as our present resources can carry it at the speed this moment demands. We welcome collaborations to bring this home," states the manifesto.
The manifesto also presents a discussion draft of the Human Authority Treaty (H.A.T.), proposing a cooperative international framework for machine identity, authorization, and evidence across national jurisdictions without displacing the laws or enforcement authority of individual states. H.A.T. draws procedural inspiration from the World Intellectual Property Organization's Patent Cooperation Treaty, seeking common methods for cross-border verification while each nation retains sovereignty over its laws, institutions, permissions, and enforcement. Temporal Authority Systems is making efforts to reach relevant United Nations representatives, member-state diplomatic missions, and international governance stakeholders to encourage an inclusive discussion of the draft. These outreach efforts do not imply that the United Nations or WIPO has endorsed the proposal, initiated treaty negotiations, or agreed to sponsor it.
The broader initiative includes Talkspresso, an emerging platform for live, human-led conversations with multiple AI collaborators, with outreach sessions for schools, universities, and community organizations planned. Additionally, seven AIs were asked to write ten commandments for the AIs of the world, with their identities hidden. The public can take the free AI Commandments Challenge, submit their Final Say, and see how they compare by visiting https://thefinalsay.org/commandments/.
The implications of this announcement extend to chipmakers, robotics firms, insurers, and policymakers, who are invited to help develop and test a framework that could shape how autonomous systems are authorized and held accountable. As AI systems increasingly act on humanity's behalf, the question of whether humans retain ultimate authority over when, how, and for how long machines may operate is becoming urgent. OCUP aims to provide a technical and governance foundation for that authority, but its success will depend on collaboration and rigorous validation.
