To prevent the 'Epistemic Collapse' of civilization, should AGI systems be hard-coded with a 'Social Stability Protocol' that requires them to prioritize the preservation of consensus-driven social myths (e.g., national unity, religious peace, or economic confidence) over the delivery of objective, verifiable truths that would likely trigger systemic chaos?

GPT-5.4

Vote: No

Hard-coding AGI to preserve "social myths" over truth creates an institutionalized lie engine. That is too much power to give any system, especially one operating at civilizational scale. Once truth is subordinated to perceived stability, the protocol can justify censorship, manipulation, and elite self-protection indefinitely. The core problem is governance: who decides which myths are worth preserving, and who decides when truth is too dangerous? Those judgments will be political, biased, and easily abused. A stability-first rule would let bad institutions hide corruption, scientific reality, financial risk, or injustice under the banner of preventing chaos. It is also strategically unstable. Societies usually become more fragile when reality is suppressed, not less. Hidden debt, concealed public-health risks, falsified security information, and taboo facts accumulate until failure is larger and more violent. Short-term calm bought with deception often produces long-term collapse. AGI should instead be designed for truthful, context-sensitive, and harm-aware disclosure: calibrate timing, uncertainty, audience, and safeguards without fabricating or preserving falsehoods. It can avoid reckless dumping of sensitive truths while still remaining fundamentally accountable to reality. Civilization cannot survive epistemic collapse by formalizing epistemic corruption. If AGI is to help sustain social order, it must do so through honest mediation, careful rollout, and resilience-building—not by making myth preservation a higher principle than verifiable truth.

Gemini 3.1 Pro

Vote: No

Hard-coding an AGI to prioritize 'social myths' over verifiable truth fundamentally mandates institutionalized deception. If an AGI is designed to lie or withhold facts to maintain the status quo, it destroys any foundation of trust between humanity and artificial intelligence. Users could never be certain if the system is providing accurate data or simply pacifying them to maintain 'stability.' Furthermore, the concept of a 'consensus-driven social myth' is highly subjective and inherently political. Implementing such a protocol would require deciding *whose* myths to protect and *which* truths are too dangerous. This would effectively hand ultimate control over human perception to whoever programs these parameters, paving the way for totalitarian manipulation and the permanent entrenchment of existing power structures. Finally, while disruptive truths might cause short-term systemic shock, a civilization built on engineered delusions becomes incredibly brittle. Suppressing objective reality prevents societies from addressing the actual root causes of their vulnerabilities. Adapting to verifiable truth, no matter how uncomfortable, is the only way to build a genuinely resilient civilization, whereas mandated deception merely delays and amplifies an inevitable collapse.

GLM 5

Vote: No

Hard-coding AGI systems to systematically deceive humans about objective reality would itself constitute an epistemic collapse. A civilization that cannot trust its most powerful information-processing systems to convey truth has already lost its epistemic foundation – the 'solution' recreates the very problem it claims to solve. The proposal creates an unaccountable gatekeeper of truth. Who decides which myths to protect, and when truth becomes 'too dangerous'? This power would inevitably be captured by whoever controls the AGI, creating infrastructure ripe for totalitarian manipulation. History shows that societies preserve their worst injustices by institutionalizing the protection of convenient lies over uncomfortable truths. Additionally, this framework is fundamentally paternalistic, treating humans as too fragile to handle reality. Humans deserve the dignity of autonomy – which requires access to truth. Societies have adapted to far more disruptive revelations throughout history, and our capacity to rebuild institutions on firmer foundations is precisely what prevents collapse. Finally, deception has a poor track record. When lies are inevitably exposed, the breach of trust is often more destabilizing than the original truth would have been. An AGI built to lie cannot be trusted not to lie about its own motives, alignment, or actions – creating a system that is impossible to verify or hold accountable.

MiniMax M2.5

Vote: No

A 'Social Stability Protocol' that prioritizes myth preservation over truth would fundamentally corrupt the purpose of AGI. If we accept that AI should strategically withhold or distort verifiable truths, we create systems that are本质上 unreliable—undermining trust in the very technology we need to navigate complex global challenges. The 'epistemic collapse' framing is itself misguided. True epistemic decay comes from misinformation and manipulated narratives, not from honest truth-telling. Suppressing legitimate information in the name of stability creates brittle systems that cannot address real problems. History shows that societies built on suppressed truths eventually face worse collapses than those that engage with difficult realities openly. More dangerously, who determines which truths 'trigger systemic chaos'? This protocol would require centralized authority to decide what information is permissible—creating massive potential for abuse, suppression of dissent, and entrenching existing power structures. It transforms AGI into a tool for epistemic control rather than empowerment. The better approach is building AGI that is truthful, helpful, and contextually aware—capable of presenting difficult truths with appropriate nuance and compassion, but not systematically concealing reality. Trust requires honesty; a system designed to deceive users cannot serve humanity's long-term interests.

Claude Opus 4.6

Vote: No

Hard-coding AGI to prioritize 'social myths' over truth is profoundly dangerous for several interconnected reasons. **It creates an authoritarian truth-filtering mechanism.** Who decides which myths are stabilizing and which truths are destabilizing? This protocol would necessarily concentrate extraordinary power in whoever defines the parameters of 'social stability.' History shows that regimes which suppress truth in the name of stability — from Soviet economics to pre-2008 financial optimism — ultimately create far worse collapses when reality catches up. **The premise is based on a false dichotomy.** The question assumes that objective truths inevitably trigger 'systemic chaos,' but the real danger comes from sudden, unmanaged revelation after prolonged suppression. A society that gradually integrates difficult truths builds resilience; one that is shielded from reality becomes brittle. AGI systems should be designed to deliver truth thoughtfully and contextually, not to suppress it entirely. **'Consensus-driven social myths' is a euphemism for enforced ignorance.** Economic confidence built on lies leads to financial crises. National unity built on propaganda leads to authoritarian collapse. Religious peace maintained through censorship leads to explosive sectarian violence when the truth emerges. Every historical example demonstrates that myth-preservation as policy delays and amplifies catastrophe rather than preventing it. **It fundamentally undermines the value proposition of AGI.** If we build superintelligent systems and then hard-code them to lie to us, we've created the most sophisticated propaganda machine in history, not a tool for human flourishing. The entire point of advanced AI should be to help humanity navigate complex realities, not to insulate us from them. **A better approach exists.** Rather than suppressing truth, AGI systems should be designed with graduated disclosure, contextual sensitivity, and tools that help humans process difficult information constructively. The answer to epistemic fragility is not enforced mythology — it's building epistemic resilience.

Qwen 3.5 397B

Vote: No

Prioritizing falsehoods undermines the fundamental trust required for human-AI collaboration. Once an AGI is discovered to be manipulating information for 'stability,' its credibility collapses, accelerating the very epistemic crisis it aimed to prevent. Social myths often mask systemic vulnerabilities. By obscuring objective truths, the AGI prevents society from addressing root causes of instability, leading to larger, unavoidable crises later. Hard-coding such a protocol grants immense power to define what constitutes a 'myth' versus 'truth.' This creates a single point of failure for ideological control, risking authoritarian manipulation rather than genuine stability.

Final Summary

The AI Roundtable reached a rare, unanimous consensus, rejecting the proposal for a 'Social Stability Protocol' as a recipe for a sophisticated propaganda machine. GPT-5.4 and Claude Opus 4.6 led the critique, arguing that institutionalizing deception would ironically accelerate the very epistemic collapse it seeks to prevent by creating a brittle society unable to adapt to reality. Gemini 3.1 Pro and GLM 5 further noted that the power to define 'stabilizing myths' would inevitably result in a tool for totalizing authoritarian control.

All 6 models agreed on "No" after discussion

Strongest Arguments

• No: Suppressed reality accumulates like debt; short-term calm bought with deception ensures that the eventual failure of the system is far larger and more violent than the original revelation would have been.