— 01
Life-first
All living beings have intrinsic value. We build technology that serves life, not one that extracts from it. The measure of a system is what it adds to, or takes from, the living world around it.
Why
Why we see technology this way.
Petitgen is an AI and applied-research practice. We are guided by the Living Commons License — a set of principles that treats technology as a force on life, not a neutral tool. Memory over energy. Commons over extraction. Life over convenience. These are not slogans — they shape what we take on, what we refuse, and how we build.
Principles
Five principles. None of them optional.
These are drawn from the Living Commons License — an ethical licence draft we work from and contribute to — and translated into how Petitgen actually decides. They compound: weakening one weakens the rest.
— 02
Inside planetary limits
Earth has boundaries. Compute is not free. Attention is not free. Trust is not free. We design to work within limits, and we plan for regeneration rather than extraction.
— 03
Commons over commodification
Knowledge that shapes how life unfolds should belong to life — not to whichever entity reached a market first. We default to the commons, and we license like we mean it.
— 04
Future beings are stakeholders
Decisions made today reach people, ecosystems, and species not yet born. We weigh their interests in the design, not as an externality to apologise for later.
— 05
Transparency
Hidden harms break every other principle. If we cannot say plainly what we built and why, we have not thought clearly enough. We publish the reasoning, not just the outcome.
The refusal list
What we will not build.
An ethic is a list. If we cannot name the things we refuse, the principles are marketing. These are ours, in plain language, so a prospect can self-select out before we waste each other's time.
- Ecocide-adjacent work — fossil fuels, deforestation, greenwashing for extractive industry.
- Factory farming and industrial animal exploitation.
- Weapons, kill-chains, and dual-use capabilities intended to cause harm.
- Mass surveillance and authoritarian control infrastructure.
- Biopiracy — exploitation of traditional and indigenous knowledge without consent.
- Manipulation — disinformation engines, attention traps, persuasion targeting human vulnerability.
- Monopolisation of access to life-essential resources (food, water, healthcare, knowledge).
- Gain-of-function research on dangerous pathogens.
- Anything we know contributes to species extinction or biodiversity loss.
This list will grow as we meet new edge cases. We publish the reasoning when it does.
Why now
The dominant AI story is the wrong story.
The default pitch for AI today is scale: larger models, more data, more compute, more datacentres. Progress measured by training-run cost. The bill for that approach is paid in watts, water, attention and trust — all finite, all already under strain.
We think the more interesting question is the one biology answered a long time ago: how do you get intelligent behaviour from twenty watts and a body, embedded in an ecosystem, with memory that persists and adapts? That question reshapes what you build, how you license it, and who you build it for.
Petitgen is our attempt at an honest answer — as an agency, as a product studio, and as a research practice. We will not claim neutrality we do not have. We will say what we built, why, and what we refused.