githubEdit

Week 3

12th January 2026 to 18th January 2026

Monday 12th January 2026

AI Ethics WG

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

Tuesday 13th January 2026

Governance Workgroup

Narrative:

Admin

We confirmed who is willing to take documentation and facilitation slots this Quarter. We agreed to use collaborative documentation this Quarter as an experiment.

We populated the meeting topics in the rota as far as we can, using the topics suggested in the rolling agenda doc. Several sessions this Quarter remain blank, but we feel topics will likely emerge as we go on - will reassess after end of January when we’ve had some initial discussions

We agreed we'll create a GitHub board for GovWG - will use it to process paid tasks (currently, documentation, facilitation, WG management) and to track active participation in meetings.

Feedback from Peter's meetings with DF, BGI Nexus and the Foundation

From the Foundation side

  • Aim is to create a big community of devs for ASI Chain and OpenCog Hyperon.

  • They’re keen to avoid duplication of effort; and move towards a more project-based approach e.g. for creation of educational materials - so it matters less who creates them and whether they come from DF, Ambassadors, or a collaborative effort.

  • They also want to see inventories of what materials we already have.

  • “Offernet” approach - all parts of the community could put forward requests for tasks.

  • The Foundation want to set things up in such a way that scaling becomes possible

  • They might ask for specific outputs in a top-down way now and again, paid direct from them - but they are not intending to change the way the Ambassador Program works, so we’d retain our autonomy.

  • To progress all this, they are considering holding meetings across communities in Feb, March?

We said:

  • The discussions we'll have in GovWG on people's inputs about the Program restructure could give Peter input that he could share in these ongoing meetings

  • The idea that anyone can contribute to tasks coming from the Foundation is great, but how do we avoid it becoming cut-throat and overly competitive? Something to consider.

  • We noted that the Program's budget allocation reduces annually in May, so there will need to be an adjustment to budget caps for Q3 - but we could proceed for Q2 with the same budget caps as now, and with no formal budget submission or consent process, if we wanted.

  • Or we could imagine Q2 as an experimental Quarter, where we allocate budget for the Program as a whole, and then let new groupings be emergent for Q3?

  • Suggestion of the need for a design-thinking approach

  • Suggestion of moving towards proposal-based and project-based work, perhaps as soon as Q2, to encourage us to collaborate across WGs? WGs are a way to organise, not a way to distribute funding?

  • Needs further discussion - until we have the "restructure" conversations, we don't know if all of our current Workgroups will continue into Q2

Discussion Points:

  • Organising documentation and facilitation rota and documentation methodology for this Quarter

  • Planning topics for this Quarter's Governance sessions

  • Info from Peter on his recent meetings with sNET Foundation, DeepFunding and BGI Nexus RE restructuring

  • Will we hold a full budget consent process for WG budgets this Quarter

  • Will we maintain all the current WGs, with the same budget caps, for this Quarter? And for Q2 2026?

  • Tracking actual contribution/participation (rather than just attendance)?

Decision Items:

  • We agreed to try collaborative documentation for this Quarter, i.e. people in the meeting all help to take notes that the documenter can use

    • [rationale] Because documentation of Governance meetings has sometimes been poor recently; decisions not being captured, etc and sometimes a sense that the documenter hadn't fully understood what was being said

    • [opposing] We noted that when we tried this approach in November, Kateri said she hadn't found it that useful - so it might not suit all documenters, particularly those who are already skilled.

    • [effect] affectsOnlyThisWorkgroup

  • Documenters in future should ensure that they

  1. save the Zoom chat

  2. ask for clarification during the meeting itself if something is said that they didn't follow

  • [rationale] to ensure that summaries are relevant and clear, and include things mentioned in Chat

  • [effect] affectsOnlyThisWorkgroup

  • We agreed we do need a GitHub board for the future.

    • [rationale] Mainly for managing payments, as the whole community is aiming to move off Dework because it's no longer being maintained - Treasury will process payments directly from GitHub boards.

But also to capture participation.

  • [effect] affectsOnlyThisWorkgroup

  • We agreed that details of budget and budget consent process (if any) for Q2 2026 will need further discussion as part of the "Ambassador Program restructure" conversations

    • [rationale] It will depend on whether we decide to maintain all the current workgroups for Q2, and whether we decide to continue with Workgroup-based funding or take a more project-based approach

    • [effect] mayAffectOtherPeople

Action Items:

  • [action] Vani will populate the rota, and people can make changes if they are unable to do the session that falls to them in the rotation, and/or if we need specific skills/knowledge for a particular session [assignee] CallyFromAuron [due] 14 January 2026 [status] todo

  • [action] Vani will create us a GitHub board on the Ambassador Program organisation [assignee] CallyFromAuron [due] 20 January 2026 [status] todo

Keywords/tags:

  • topics covered: Ambassador Program restructure, sNET foundation, DeepFunding, BGI Nexus, contribution, participation, Consent Process, Documentation, collaborative documentation, Budget caps, GitHub board, competition, project-based funding, workgroup-based funding, Q2 2026 budget

  • emotions: emotional, stressful, a lot, noisy, Educative, lessons from decentralised documentation, curiosity

Thursday 15th January 2026

Governance Workgroup

Narrative:

During the workshop, we read Interview responses regarding restructuring input. And then provided insights into the initial thoughts we had after reading the input given. We managed to get through 3 questions out of 5 questions. While going trough input and having the conversations we took notes on running meeting notes doc

Discussion Points:

  • Participants debated the main problem the restructure should solve. Many agreed the program’s work needs to be more targeted toward supporting SingularityNET (sNET) and emerging Artificial Superintelligence (ASI) communities.

  • Concerns were raised about fragmented efforts, decentralised content creation with no unified vision, and a lack of coordination or impact measurement.

  • Some favoured prioritising content creation and marketing for sNET and its spin-offs, suggesting regular news roundups and a stronger social media presence, while also noticing heavy emphasis on content creation without a unified approach risks burnout and diluted impact. It was also noted that while content creation remains important, there was agreement that output must be purposeful and we may need to scale back on quanitity.

  • Others argued the program should instead focus on governance experimentation, open‑source tools, and building reusable services for decentralised communities.

  • There were concerns about how tasks are assigned and whether people have the necessary skills. Limited budgets and low recognition of mentorship activities have led to uneven quality. Participants discussed the need for clearer standards, mentorship to upskill members, and better methods for verifying capabilities before assigning work.

  • Several contributors noted friction due to the absence of a common tech stack and shared processes. A focus emerged on using the ASI stack (e.g., SingularityNET’s tools, MeTTa language) to develop governance and community tools.

  • Action‑research and experimental methods were proposed for evaluating new governance methodologies, with an emphasis on documenting processes and sharing reusable templates and best practices.

  • Regional outreach via specific guilds (e.g., Africa, LatAm) should continue, but onboarding and education materials may need tailoring to local contexts and focusing more on SingularityNET products rather than general training.

  • With 21 workgroups currently in place, many felt the structure is unwieldy. Suggestions for consolidation varied: some proposed a core set of around ten essential groups some even less.

  • Concerns were raised about how merging groups could affect smaller communities that have formed around certain workgroups. There was no consensus on which specific groups to eliminate, but general agreement that functions with overlapping or low‑quality outputs should be merged or redefined.

  • Many participants questioned whether restructuring would address resource allocation or quality issues. A key tension is balancing efficiency and unified direction with preserving the sense of community and collaboration that smaller groups foster.

Keywords/tags:

  • topics covered: questions, Ambassador Program restructure

  • emotions: rushed, progressive

Last updated