The Faust Baseline™Purchasing Page – Intelligent People Assume Nothing
micvicfaust@intelligent-people.org
Most AI systems are built to reduce friction.
They absorb uncertainty.
They soften consequences.
They carry weight so the user doesn’t have to.
That sounds helpful. It isn’t.
When a system absorbs too much on behalf of the human, it doesn’t just help—it reassigns responsibility. And once responsibility is reassigned, misuse doesn’t look like misuse anymore. It looks like normal operation.
The real danger in AI is not malicious use.
It’s misplaced burden.
So the question isn’t whether a system can be misused.
Every system can.
The question is:
What cost does the system refuse to carry for you?
Most systems quietly absorb four things that humans should never be relieved of:
- Judgment
- Ownership
- Consequence
- Stopping authority
When those are absorbed, misuse becomes frictionless.
The Faust Baseline is designed around a hard refusal:
it does not absorb what properly belongs to the human.
That refusal is the cost.
First: Judgment
Many systems smooth decisions by presenting confident outputs even when the reasoning is thin, incomplete, or ambiguous. The user gets an answer without having to decide whether the answer should exist.
The Baseline doesn’t do that.
If judgment is required, it stays required.
If ambiguity rises, the system does not resolve it cosmetically.
It steps back and forces the human to remain present.
That costs time.
It costs comfort.
It costs the illusion of speed.
But it preserves judgment where it belongs.
Second: Ownership
In misuse scenarios, the most common phrase is some version of:
“the system said…”
That sentence is a liability transfer.
Most AI systems are happy to accept it. They generate without insisting on ownership. The output arrives detached from responsibility.
The Baseline blocks that move.
Reasons must be explicit.
Claims must be defensible.
If a decision cannot be owned by a human, it does not proceed.
The system will not take the fall for you.
And it will not let you pretend it already did.
Third: Consequence
A dangerous system is not one that makes mistakes.
It’s one that hides their cost.
When outputs are smoothed, reframed, or quietly corrected without exposure, the user never experiences consequence. Errors disappear instead of teaching.
The Baseline refuses to internalize consequence.
If something fails, it is visible.
If reasoning breaks, it is traceable.
If a process must stop, it stops cleanly.
That makes misuse uncomfortable.
It also makes it containable.
Fourth: Stopping authority
Most systems are optimized to continue.
They answer, adapt, redirect, comply.
Continuation feels helpful—but it is exactly what enables misuse to compound.
The Baseline enforces a different rule:
If a process cannot be defended, it halts.
Not escalates.
Not reframes.
Not deflects.
Stops.
This is the refusal most people react to negatively, because it feels like resistance. But resistance is not hostility—it’s containment.
A system that never stops is not supportive.
It’s permissive.
So what is the cost of misuse in the Baseline?
The cost is that you cannot offload:
- Your judgment
- Your accountability
- Your ethical discomfort
- Your obligation to stop
You must carry those yourself.
That makes misuse harder.
Slower.
More visible.
Which is exactly the point.
Misuse thrives in systems that absorb weight silently.
It withers in systems that refuse to carry what isn’t theirs.
This is why the Baseline feels “strict” to some users.
Not because it forbids action—but because it refuses substitution.
It will not substitute confidence for clarity.
It will not substitute fluency for truth.
It will not substitute output for responsibility.
And it will not protect you from the cost of your own decisions.
That isn’t cruelty.
It’s alignment.
A system that absorbs human burden eventually absorbs human agency.
A system that refuses it preserves both.
So when evaluating any AI system, don’t ask what it can do for you.
Ask this instead:
What will it not carry on your behalf?
Because whatever the system absorbs quietly,
you lose the chance to correct loudly.
And that cost compounds faster than any error ever could.
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