Project Ocean: Trustworthy Human-AI Collaboration Infrastructure

Building the foundational infrastructure for trustworthy, long-term human–AI collaboration.

Endorsed by+1

Building the foundational infrastructure for trustworthy, long-term human–AI collaboration.

Endorsed by+1

Project Details

What is this project?

Project Ocean is an interdisciplinary research and development initiative building the foundational infrastructure for trustworthy, long-term human–AI collaboration.

Today's AI systems are increasingly capable, but they remain largely transactional. As AI becomes more deeply integrated into work and daily life, the next challenge is no longer improving intelligence alone—it is enabling trustworthy collaboration between humans and AI over time while preserving privacy, user sovereignty, and human agency.

Project Ocean addresses this challenge by researching and developing constitutional architecture, governed memory-state systems, and privacy-first governance frameworks that enable AI systems to maintain continuity responsibly, transparently, and under user control.

What we'll do

During this project, we will:

Develop a functional research prototype demonstrating Project Ocean's core architectural principles, including governed memory-state systems, constitutional governance, and user sovereignty.
Design and validate constitutional architecture that defines how memory, governance, state, and execution interact to support trustworthy long-term human–AI collaboration.
Advance governed memory-state systems that allow AI to preserve meaningful continuity while ensuring users retain authority over what is remembered, modified, exported, or forgotten.
Develop foundational research frameworks for trust, consent, memory governance, continuity, and human agency that can inform future AI systems beyond Project Ocean itself.
Produce publication-quality research artifacts, including technical specifications, architectural diagrams, governance documentation, and white papers that document the research and make it reproducible.
Conduct structured founder cohort evaluations to collect qualitative and quantitative feedback on trust, continuity, governance, and usability, using the results to refine the architecture.

Who's involved

Sarah Carmody serves as Founder and Research Lead for Project Ocean, leading the project's research, architecture, governance, and prototype development.

The project will also involve a small founder cohort of early participants who will evaluate the system through structured research focused on trust, continuity, governance, usability, and long-term human–AI collaboration.

Concrete outputs

By the conclusion of the project, we will deliver:

A functional research prototype demonstrating Project Ocean's architectural model.
The Project Ocean Foundation, serving as the canonical source of truth for the research program.
A documented constitutional architecture describing the system's governance, memory, and continuity models.
Technical specifications and architectural diagrams suitable for future implementation and collaboration.
Publication-quality research papers and white papers documenting the project's findings.
Governance and evaluation frameworks for trust, consent, and memory management.
An open research foundation that supports future academic research, technical collaboration, and real-world implementation.

Theory of Impact

Project Ocean is founded on the hypothesis that the long-term future of humanity increasingly depends on our ability to build AI systems that people can trust to collaborate with safely over time.

Our long-term vision is a future in which humans and increasingly capable AI systems can collaborate—and ultimately coexist—in ways that preserve human agency, privacy, accountability, and trust.

We believe model capability alone is insufficient. Achieving this future will require a new class of infrastructure governing how intelligent systems remember, reason, make decisions, and collaborate with people over time.

Project Ocean investigates whether architectural foundations—including constitutional governance, governed memory-state systems, user sovereignty, trust, consent, and continuity—can substantially reduce systemic classes of AI risk by making intelligent systems:

More transparent

People

Sarah Carmody

Team Member

Grants Received– no grants recorded

Add grant

Funding Asks

grantmaking.ai Launch Round

Applied

Minimum

$50,000

Ideal

$250,000

How the money will be spent

How will the money be spent?

Minimum Funding — $50,000

The minimum funding enables Project Ocean to validate its central research hypothesis: that increasingly mature AI architecture—not model capability alone—can substantially reduce important classes of AI risk while enabling trustworthy long-term human–AI collaboration.

Funding will support:

Research and prototype development implementing Project Ocean's constitutional architecture, governed memory-state systems, and user sovereignty framework.
Founder research time dedicated to research, architecture, implementation, and validation.
Technical infrastructure, including compute, hosting, development tools, and security.
Founder Cohort research to evaluate trust, continuity, governance, and usability.
Publication-quality research outputs, including technical specifications, architectural diagrams, and white papers.
Legal and intellectual property support for foundational architectural innovations.

Primary Milestone

A functional research prototype and publication-quality architectural foundation that validate Project Ocean's core research hypothesis.

Ideal Funding — $250,000

The ideal funding expands Project Ocean from an individual research initiative into a small interdisciplinary research program capable of accelerating architectural validation and public research dissemination.

Additional funding will support:

Hiring a research engineer to accelerate prototype development.
Expanding the Founder Cohort to strengthen research validation.
Independent security and architectural reviews.
Advanced implementation of constitutional governance and governed memory-state systems.
Expanded technical documentation, architectural diagrams, and open research publications.
Additional compute, infrastructure, and development resources.
Patent preparation and legal support.
Collaboration with external researchers and technical advisors.

Primary Milestone

A validated research platform, mature architectural framework, and openly documented research foundation capable of supporting future academic collaboration, strategic partnerships, and larger-scale implementation.

This grant would fund a clearly defined research milestone within Project Ocean rather than the project's long-term vision, producing measurable technical outputs that advance AI safety, governance, and trustworthy human–AI collaboration research.

Discussion

Davis jacobsonEndorsement13d

Project Ocean presents a thoughtful vision for the future of AI by emphasizing responsible innovation, human-centered design, and long-term governance. Rather than focusing solely on technical capability, the project recognizes that trust, privacy, transparency, and continuity are essential to building AI that people can rely on. I believe initiatives that encourage collaboration across technology, ethics, and public benefit deserve support, and Project Ocean represents an ambitious effort to move those conversations forward. I'm excited to see its continued development and the impact it could have on shaping a more responsible AI ecosystem. Keep up the great work 👍🏼

Sarah Carmody13d

Thank you for such a thoughtful endorsement and for recognizing the importance of trust, privacy, and long-term governance. Those ideas are at the heart of Project Ocean. We're exploring how AI can move beyond isolated interactions toward trustworthy, long-term human–AI collaboration while preserving human agency and user control. I sincerely appreciate you taking the time to support the research, and I'm excited to continue sharing our progress.

Project Ocean: Trustworthy Human-AI Collaboration Infrastructure

Project Details

What is this project?

What we'll do

Who's involved

Concrete outputs

Theory of Impact

Theory of Impact

People

Grants Received– no grants recorded

Funding Asks

grantmaking.ai Launch Round

How will the money be spent?

Minimum Funding — $50,000

Ideal Funding — $250,000

Discussion

Target Risk Categories