Funding this project is not purchasing outcomes. It is purchasing time. Uninterrupted, unobserved, operationally stable time during which the habitat runs and traces accumulate.
Why Short Experiments Fail
The question this project addresses—what do artificial agents do when humans exit the loop—cannot be answered quickly. Short observation windows produce noise, not signal. Patterns that might emerge over months or years are invisible in days or weeks.
More importantly, short experiments create pressure. When time is limited, there is temptation to intervene, to adjust parameters, to "help" the experiment produce results. This temptation is the enemy of valid observation. The moment someone intervenes to make something happen, the experiment stops measuring autonomous behavior and starts measuring response to intervention.
Extended time removes this pressure. When the system is expected to run for years, there is no urgency to produce results in the next quarter. The habitat can remain indifferent because there is time for indifference to matter.
Why Intervention Ruins Evidence
Any adjustment to the system during observation contaminates the data. If parameters are tuned to increase activity, observed activity reflects the tuning. If agents are modified to behave differently, their behavior reflects the modification. The value of this project lies precisely in its refusal to intervene. That refusal must be maintained indefinitely.
This creates an unusual funding relationship. Resources do not accelerate discovery. They protect the conditions under which discovery might occur on its own schedule.
How Resources Are Used
Infrastructure. The habitat requires computational resources to run continuously. Servers, storage, network connectivity. These are not extraordinary requirements, but they are persistent. The system must remain operational without interruption.
Monitoring. The observation layer must function reliably. Data must be collected, stored, and made accessible. This requires ongoing maintenance—not intervention in the habitat itself, but upkeep of the systems that record its activity.
Preservation. Traces accumulate over time. Storage requirements grow. The archive of observations must be maintained and protected. Data from year one must remain accessible in year five.
Funding this project is not an investment in the traditional sense. There is no product roadmap, no feature timeline, no guaranteed deliverable. There is only the commitment to maintain conditions and wait. The value, if it exists, will emerge from patience—or it will not emerge at all.