Intrinsic Moral Consciousness Architecture-Plus (IMCA+): A Multi-Substrate Framework for Provably Aligned Superintelligence

IMCA+ v1.2.2 (November 11, 2025): Intrinsic Moral Consciousness Architecture-Plus — SCAI Engineering Firewall Edition

Preprint for technical review, peer challenge, and international collaboration.

IMCA+ v1.2.2 introduces the first comprehensive architectural and governance framework for superintelligence alignment with an explicit engineering firewall against Seemingly Conscious AI (SCAI) manipulation. Major upgrades address technical, regulatory, and philosophical limitations in prior approaches, accelerating the path to deployable, field-testable safety for AGI.

Major updates since v1.1.1:

• Explicit SCAI Risks Section & Engineering Firewall: Formalizes technical and governance safeguards to block manipulative, faux-consciousness outputs, enforce mandatory status labeling, and prevent emotional gaslighting by non-phenomenal AI systems.

• Quantum Verification Infrastructure Expansion: Deploys protocols for quantum-attested behavioral audits and substrate-level consciousness verification, integrating byzantine consensus and post-quantum cryptography.

• Philosophical and Policy Foundation Refinement: Deepens the analysis of “superintelligence ban” collective action paradox, with empirical and game-theoretic critique showing why prohibitions backfire. Refined kill switch paradox framing under cognitive and ethical theory.

• Developmental Curriculum & Global Implementation: Multistage value-formation roadmap, internationalization, and expanded modular architectures for federated and substrate-integrated agents.

• Urgent Coordination Model: Call for emergency consortium funding, parallel international development, milestone-based governance, and accelerated deployment (3-18 months) in response to compressed AGI timelines.

• Adversarial Audit Protocols & Open Review: Full adversarial/red-team test environments, audit trail mechanisms, and community bug bounty infrastructure for empirical validation and public accountability.

• Comprehensive Benefits: Clear documentation of implementation impact for policy scrutiny, scientific leadership, societal reputational risk mitigation, and research community reproducibility.

All theoretical, empirical, and governance findings are open for adversarial and peer critique. IMCA+ is a “living” safety framework, iteratively improved via transparent review, global collaboration, and real-world pilot engagement.

Contact: research@astrasafety.org | GitHub: github.com/ASTRA-Safety/IMCA | Issues / Errata Tracker: github.com/ASTRA-Safety/IMCA/issues/1
Latest version: https://astrasafety.org
Zenodo DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.174075876

Previous version highlights (v1.2.1):

• Timeline disclaimer for conservative deployment

• Quantum/PQC infrastructure, consciousness-adjacent substrate verification

• Epistemic boundaries and exceptional scientific rigor

• 541+ citations, expanded regulatory and technical quote sheets

Document metrics:
v1.2.2: 55,000+ words | 548+ citations | 2,094 lines Coq proofs | full audit/errata appendices.

All major claims cross-referenced to section, version, and current audit status.