Note ·
The never-list comes before the feature
Before I design an AI feature, I write down what the AI must never do inside it. That list comes first because it is the part I am least willing to change. Features change shape all the time. The boundaries are a promise to the church, so I settle them before anything else.
What goes on the list?
The list names work that belongs to a person: sending a message to someone in the church, making a pastoral decision, pretending to offer pastoral care or prayer, and scoring or ranking a person. Every line describes something a model could do today. Nothing technical stops it. The list is the only thing that does.
Why does the list come before the feature?
The list comes first because a finished feature argues for itself. It demos well, someone asks for it, and the boundary starts to look like an obstacle. When the refusals are written down first, a good idea has to fit inside them. If it cannot fit, I find out before I have built it.
Pastors have asked me more than once for Collie, the assistant in FlockConnect, to text two members an introduction when they seem likely to hit it off. It would demo beautifully. It fails the first line of the list. When suggested introductions come, they will go to the pastor, and the pastor will make the introduction. I told the whole story in Pastors Asked for This Feature. I Will Not Build It.
Why publish the list?
I publish the list because a private boundary is easy to move quietly. A published one has witnesses. FlockConnect publishes what Collie will never do. Ozzie’s never-list sits on its home page and in its open-source code, where no user, church or plan can switch it off. If I ever drift from either list, anyone can point to the line.
It is the same instinct behind my pledge that FlockConnect is not for sale. A promise a church can read is a promise a church can hold me to.
Where does the question come from?
The question comes from Jurassic Park, one of my favorite books. Ian Malcolm warns, in so many words, that being able to do a thing does not settle whether you should. I paraphrase it often. In a church the question weighs more, because on the other side of every feature is a person made in the image of God.
The never-list is how I answer that question on purpose, before a feature has a chance to answer it for me.