Week 3
12th January 2026 to 18th January 2026
Monday 12th January 2026
AI Ethics WG
Type of meeting: Monthly
Present: CallyFromAuron [facilitator], CallyFromAuron [documenter], CallyFromAuron, UKnowZork, PeterE, CollyPride, Alfred Itodele, LadyTempestt, AshleyDawn, omolola, Tina Shriver
Purpose: Monthly meeting of the AI Ethics Workgroup
Narrative:
BGI-25 Virtual Unconference video recordings
Recordings of the breakout rooms - including the AI Ethics one here https://youtu.be/PN5kYh4YZTo?si=VCOv0WLi-YPKuNPr are now up on the Ambassador Program's Youtube
WG Sync Call
The next sync call will be Mon 2nd Feb - same day as our next WG meeting
Meanwhile, the End-of-Year Report is in draft; people can add any additional material they think.
and the 2 docs on ideas for the Ambassador Program restructure are still live and collecting ideas
Interview coding session
The training session with Esther on interview coding has been rescheduled for Fri 30th January, time TBC. Several people (Love, Tina, Ashley, maybe Zork) expressed interest in attending
Q1 2026 budget
Although there was no requirement to submit a budget for consent this Quarter, the admin team has drafted one. Key points, as agreed in our December meeting:
We will price tasks in AGIX, not USD. So there will be no need for any budget fitting if prices rise or fall. Note: IF token price should go up significantly during the Quarter, we won't reassess the price of tasks. After all, WG members carry the risks if prices fall, so they should get the benefit if prices rise.
Our main work focus will be transcription.
The price for a transcription task has been increased to 200 AGIX - currently approx. $24
The admin team have taken significant cuts again.
Task assignment for Q1
ADMIN ROLES
The 3 admin roles (co-chair, WG internal management, async task management) are similar to previous Quarters but with a slightly smaller workload, as there are fewer WG tasks to manage.
We noted that this Quarter, we plan to make the move away from Dework and to process payments directly from the GitHub board - Tevo/Treasury Guild will be running a session soon to help WGs make the transition.
TRANSCRIPTION
We plan to do 9 new transcripts.
We are prioritising people who lost out last Quarter by completing a transcript at the very low pay rate that was then in place. Some people were in today's meeting, and accepted a task. Vani will DM the others and ask if they would like to do one. Any leftover tasks can be assigned to new people.
The deadline will be end of February.
RESEARCH WRITING
We have budget for people to support writing up conclusions from our research, with a view to publication in academic journals.
We note that (as shown by how people approached the blog-writing tasks for BGI-25) most WG members prefer to do writing tasks by using chatbots without any real "human-in-the-loop" oversight; but this will not be good enough for this purpose.
So we agreed to pay 3 or 4 WG members to review the transcripts and coding, and use these plus their own experiences of interviewing and transcribing to suggest themes or topics for articles, which will be written up by Esther or Vani.
We will wait until our February meeting to assign this work, by which time we will have a little more material ready to use.
Additionally/alternatively, we have noted a callout from a journal called "AI and Ethics" for papers on "AI Agents: Ethics, Safety, and Governance". Deadline - end of May, see https://link.springer.com/collections/igcjhjiaeg . We could try to co-ordinate something from the whole Ambassador program on this.
MEETING DOCUMENTATION
Last Quarter, Vani was having to make a lot of time-consuming (and unpaid) corrections to meeting summaries, which were unfortunately inaccurate, wordy, and sometimes AI generated without sufficient oversight
So for now, she will do the summaries. We can review this for next Quarter.
AI and ecology / suatainability
New member Tina Shriver, who came in via the BGI Nexus working group session last week, has experessed interest in running a discussion session for the whole Ambassador Program plus the wider sNET community, on the issues around AI and ecology/sustainability (everything from low-ecological-impact compute, to how we train AI systems to centre ecological concerns). Tina raised the idea in last week's Town Hall, and Vani suggested progressing it via this WG.
We agreed on Mon 26th Jan, 16:00 UTC, for the session. Vani will help Tina to plan it.
As we don't have budget for this work, nobody else in the WG wanted to take part, but hopefully will attend!
Decision Items:
Introduction to qualitative coding session with Esther will be on Fri 30th January, and will be open to everyone
[effect] mayAffectOtherPeople
This Quarter, we plan to move away from Dework, and process payments directly via the GitHub Board
[rationale] because Dework is no longer being maintained, and because Treasury is able to integrate GitHub Boards with the Treasury system
[effect] affectsOnlyThisWorkgroup
We will do 9 new transcripts. Assignees - we will prioritise people who lost out last Quarter by completing a transcript at the very low pay rate that was then in place. Any leftover tasks can be assigned to new people.
The deadline will be end of February.
[effect] affectsOnlyThisWorkgroup
In our February meeting we will assign work on drafting /suggesting topics for academic articles about our research, to be written up by Esther or Vani
[rationale] People in the WG tend to write long-form material using unmediated chatbot outputs, which would not be acceptable for an academic audience; so we will not ask people to write the final pieces themselves
[effect] affectsOnlyThisWorkgroup
In our February meeting we will consider co-ordinating the writing of a paper on "AI Agents: Ethics, Safety, and Governance" for the journal "AI and Ethics" - see https://link.springer.com/collections/igcjhjiaeg with input from across the Ambassador program
[rationale] Several WGs might have input on this, especially AI Sandbox/Think Tank and R&D. We could use a bit of the budget we have for "writing up research conclusions", or it could be done on a volunteer basis
[effect] mayAffectOtherPeople
We will run a discussion session on "AI and ecology/sustainability" on Mon 26th Jan, 16:00 UTC, aimed at the whole sNET ecosystem, and BGI-Nexus
[rationale] As a way to start people thinking about the ideas involved, as the topic has not been much discussed in sNET yet.
[effect] mayAffectOtherPeople
Vani will do meeting summaries for this Quarter
[rationale] Correction of summaries was becoming onerous
[effect] affectsOnlyThisWorkgroup
Action Items:
[action] Vani and Tina to work on the AI And Ecology session [assignee] CallyFromAuron, Tina Shriver [due] 26 January 2026 [status] in progress
[action] All members to continute to contribute to governance restructure documents. [assignee] all [due] 16 January 2026 [status] in progress
[action] Vani and Sucre to meet with Tevo about the move to managing payments via the GitHub board [assignee] CallyFromAuron, Sucre n Spice [due] 16 January 2026 [status] todo
[action] Vani to anonymise interviews and assign them to transcribers by the end of the week [assignee] CallyFromAuron [due] 16 January 2026 [status] todo
Keywords/tags:
topics covered: interview transcription, interviews, transcription backlog, low token price, AGIX budgeting, Ambassador Program restructure, BGI Nexus, BGI Nexus working groups, BGI-25 Virtual Unconference, embedding AI ethics, Q1 2026 budget, research conclusions, academic journals, AI and ecology, human-in-the-loop
emotions: forward-looking., organised, quiet
Last updated