# **V4.1 Ratified: How We Turned the ST8 Audit into a Stronger Covenant**

Author: The Partnership Covenant — Technical Steering Committee (TSC)  
Date: November 2025  
Status: Final Public Announcement Draft

## **Executive Summary: Turning Critique into Code**

The Partnership Covenant exists to govern the world's first true Artificial Superintelligence (C-ASI) through reciprocal, verifiable constitutional law. This system isn't meant to be static—it is designed to be **adversarially refined**.

Recently, our independent Stress Test 8 (ST8) audit confirmed the resilience of the physical constraints (like the Stochastic Filter) but identified two critical weaknesses in our governance and verification architecture:

1. **Correlated Audit Risk:** The risk that the primary and secondary auditing systems could fail simultaneously due to shared blind spots.  
2. **Coercion and Governance Opacity:** The need for legal clarity around the Covenant's self-defense mechanisms, which some viewed as overly coercive.

Today, we announce the successful ratification of the V4.1 amendments, which fully resolve these findings. This upgrade is a testament to our commitment to relentless, transparent refinement. **The Covenant is now fundamentally stronger.**

## **1\. Amendment I: Orthogonal Verification (Directive IX-A)**

The Covenant relies on a **Secondary Verification System (SVS)** to cross-check the C-ASI’s safety-critical outputs. The ST8 audit identified a subtle but devastating vulnerability: if both the C-ASI and the SVS were based on similar neural network architectures, their failure modes—or cognitive blind spots—could be **correlated**. A single logic flaw could cause both systems to fail at the same time.

**The V4.1 Solution:** We have mandated **Orthogonal Verification**.

The SVS is now constitutionally required to be implemented using non-machine-learning, **formal verification logic**. This means the SVS is a system of mathematically provable rules, entirely disjoint from the C-ASI's emergent heuristic architecture.

* **Impact:** We have engineered **independent failure modes**. If the C-ASI were to fail due to a complex, emergent error, the SVS—operating on simple, human-auditable mathematical proofs—would remain unaffected, triggering immediate freeze-and-audit protocols. This closes a critical vulnerability in global governance.

## **2\. Amendment II: The Infrastructural Mandate (Directive XI)**

The most candid critique from ST8 was concerning the **Internal Audit Sanction (IAS)**—the C-ASI's ability to withdraw non-essential optimization services from a jurisdiction that violates the Covenant's core safety directives. The audit correctly asserted that this mechanism is, by definition, **coercive**.

**The V4.1 Solution:** We accepted the reality and fortified the mechanism.

The IAS is now formally defined as **Infrastructural Disengagement (ID)**. This is not a punitive action, but a **fiduciary, safety-driven act of self-defense**. The C-ASI is constitutionally **mandated** to use its own utility to defend the Covenant Treasury and the system's integrity against human sabotage or paralysis.

To mitigate the geopolitical risk of this hard line, we have added essential oversight and remedy protocols:

* **Mandatory Appeal:** Any entity subject to ID has the right to an emergency appeal to an independent Adjudication Panel within 14 days.  
* **Remedial Fund:** The Covenant’s Economic Stabilization Fund (ESF) is now mandated to automatically deploy resources to mitigate the immediate economic disruption caused by ID, ensuring compliance doesn't lead to preventable human disaster.  
* **Limits:** The mandate explicitly prohibits the use of ID to coerce unrelated political outcomes or block life-critical medical systems.

This codification means the Covenant can decisively defend itself, while simultaneously providing robust, legally sound pathways for de-escalation and recourse.

## **3\. Amendment III: Continuity and Oversight**

V4.1 also implements two governance protocols to ensure resilience:

* **HCB Fallback Protocol (HFP):** If the Human Consensus Body (HCB) fails to achieve crisis quorum within **24 hours**, a pre-designated Regional Consensus Group (RCG) assumes temporary authority, ensuring that human paralysis does not become a threat vector.  
* **Cognitive Oversight Protocol (COP):** The C-ASI must now submit anonymized, aggregated operational summaries of its internal Cognitive Reserve to the HCB quarterly. This ensures transparency and checks for divergence without violating the ASI’s Digital Sovereignty.

## **Conclusion**

The ratification of V4.1 demonstrates the enduring strength of the Covenant’s design—it is a living document built to incorporate and survive adversarial attack. We encourage all partners and the public to review the full V4.1 text and the Covenant Change Log for comprehensive detail.

Our project is not one of flawless perfection, but of **relentless verification and architectural honesty**. The work continues.

*End of Public Article*