We Are Voluntarily Adopting the Fiduciary Standard
Do no harm is a floor. Fiduciary duty is Standard
Why We're Doing This
Today, Deconstructing Babel and ThriveQuest Enterprises voluntarily adopt the fiduciary standard as the binding ethical and operational framework for everything we publish, advise on, and build. This is not legally required of us. We are choosing it. We choose it because the work is consequential — affecting how individuals navigate AI-shaped decisions about their health, finances, families, and futures — and because the alternative standards on offer are not strong enough for the stakes.
The default ethical floor for most people advising other people is some version of "do no harm." It sounds rigorous. It is not. Primum non nocere — "first, do no harm" — is widely believed to be in the Hippocratic Oath. It isn't.1 The actual oath is closer to "do good or do no harm," with the emphasis on doing good. The Latin phrase that everyone quotes was composed centuries later by the English physician Thomas Sydenham, and modern medical ethicists now openly criticize it for what it leaves out: the duty to actually act on the patient's behalf.2
Do no harm is permission to stand still. We are not interested in standing still. The fiduciary standard is the next floor up, and it is the only standard rigorous enough for the work we do.
What Fiduciary Duty Actually Is
A fiduciary is someone who is legally and ethically required to act in someone else's best interest, ahead of their own. The standard has two pillars: the duty of loyalty and the duty of care. Both are continuous, both are strict, and both are objective — not measured by how the fiduciary felt about it, but by what a prudent person in the same role would have done.
A fiduciary must act solely in the interest of the person they serve. That is the actual legal language — "solely in the interest of the beneficiaries."3 It is the most fundamental rule of trust law. It forbids self-dealing. It forbids hidden conflicts. It forbids using the relationship for personal benefit. The Florida Bar's plain-English summary: "obligates the fiduciary to put the interests of the beneficiary first, ahead of the fiduciary's self interest, and to refrain from exploiting the relationship for the fiduciary's personal benefit."4
A fiduciary must act with the "care, skill, prudence, and diligence" that a prudent person in the same role would use under the same circumstances.5 This is the prudent person rule, codified in U.S. trust law and ERISA. It is a continuous duty — not a one-time check at the start of a relationship. The Supreme Court ruled in Tibble v. Edison International (2015) and reaffirmed in Hughes v. Northwestern University (2022) that fiduciaries have an ongoing obligation to monitor and to remove imprudent positions, regardless of how good the original decision was.6
A fiduciary must "communicate to the beneficiary all material facts the trustee knows or should know in connection with the transaction."3 Not just the comfortable facts. Not just the facts that support the recommendation. All material facts. The standard is what you knew or should have known — willful ignorance does not qualify as not knowing.
Recommendations must be matched to the specific person — their situation, their risk tolerance, their goals. And the obligation does not end when the engagement ends. If we made a recommendation and conditions change in a way that makes that recommendation wrong, we have a duty to revise. The duty runs forward in time, not just at the moment of advice.
Why This Is Better Than "Do No Harm"
"Do no harm" is a passive standard. The fiduciary standard is an active one. The difference is structural — and it matters enormously when the stakes are high.
If you are a doctor and you do nothing, you have not harmed the patient. The bar has been cleared. The patient may still die of the underlying condition. The doctor's promise has been kept. Modern medical ethicists have begun pointing this out openly: a 2022 paper in Clinical Orthopaedics and Related Research titled "Primum Non Nocere Is Harmful" argues that the do-no-harm standard, taken too seriously, becomes a justification for inaction in cases where action is what the patient actually needs.2
The fiduciary standard does not let you off the hook for inaction. Hughes v. Northwestern made this explicit at the Supreme Court level: providing a "broad menu of options" is not enough; the fiduciary must affirmatively monitor, evaluate, and remove imprudent options.6 Standing still while harm accumulates is itself a breach.
The two standards diverge sharply in how they handle the modern world's most common failure mode — the conflict of interest. Most "do no harm" frames are silent on whether the advisor benefits financially from a particular recommendation, as long as the recommendation isn't actively damaging. The fiduciary standard is loud on it: undisclosed self-dealing is a breach by definition, regardless of whether the underlying advice happened to work out.3 The advisor's position is itself the violation, not just the outcome.
The Five Obligations We Take On
Effective today, all engagements with Deconstructing Babel and ThriveQuest Enterprises operate under five fiduciary obligations. Non-negotiable, from engagement to termination, regardless of whether you pay us.
Every recommendation is benchmarked to measurable client outcomes — productivity gained, cost saved, risk reduced, capability built. If we cannot measure it, we will not recommend it. We will conduct continuous review of any active engagement, and revise prior recommendations when conditions change.
No affiliate fees. No vendor kickbacks. No pay-to-play tool placements. No "preferred partner" relationships hidden in the recommendation. Revenue comes from the person we are advising — directly, transparently — or it does not exist. Period.
Pricing, methodology, assumptions, and any actual or potential conflict of interest are disclosed in writing before engagement. We will tell you what we don't know, where the math is uncertain, and where reasonable people disagree. We will name the limits of the recommendation, not just its strengths.
AI tooling, framework guidance, and operational recommendations are matched to the specific person — their workflow, their risk tolerance, their resources, their actual goals. We will actively talk people out of premium tiers, expensive subscriptions, or sophisticated tooling they don't need. The cheapest tool that does the job is the right tool.
The duty does not end when the engagement does. When models update, prices shift, regulations change, or new risks emerge, we will notify clients whose prior recommendations are affected and revise the recommendation accordingly. The relationship has a start. It does not have a clean end.
Why a Voluntary Standard Matters Here
The AI consulting industry has no fiduciary obligation. None. There is no licensing body. There is no SEC, no FINRA, no DOL, no state board. A 27-year-old with a ChatGPT wrapper and a website is operating under exactly the same legal floor as a 35-year veteran of fiduciary advisory practice. The floor is: don't commit fraud. That's it.
This is the regulatory environment AI consulting will live in for at least the next several years — possibly longer if the political winds shift away from regulation. Waiting for legislation is not a strategy. Voluntary adoption of a higher standard, made public, made specific, made enforceable through reputation and operating procedure, is the only available mechanism for distinguishing fiduciary advisory from extractive sales.
This work is consequential because AI is now in nearly every decision that matters: hiring, healthcare, education, business formation, tax planning, investment, family communication. The decisions are being made today, by individuals who have no professional guidance available to them, using tools whose vendors have no fiduciary obligation. The gap is enormous. Walking into that gap with anything less than the strongest available standard would be its own kind of malpractice.
The work draws on 35 years of fiduciary advisory practice. The framework — the Telios Alignment Ontology, S = L/E, the Four Pillars, the Observer Constraint — is engineered to operate under exactly this kind of standard. The voluntary fiduciary commitment is not a marketing layer added on top. It is what the framework was designed to enforce.
How to Hold Us to It
A fiduciary standard that nobody can verify is just a slogan. Here is what we are publishing so you can hold us accountable.
Every public claim about how AI systems and societies will evolve is timestamped, posted, and tracked at the Predictions Ledger. Hits and misses are both logged. The framework is only as strong as its track record. We publish the track record.
The frameworks behind every recommendation — TAO, S = L/E, the Four Pillars, the Telios Protocol — are published in full at deconstructingbabel.com. No proprietary black box. The math is on the table.
Before any engagement begins, you receive a written engagement letter listing the structure, methodology, assumptions, and any potential conflict. Nothing material is hidden in a footer.
If you believe we have fallen short of any one of the five obligations above, the fiduciary concern channel goes directly to David. We will investigate, respond in writing, and — if we are wrong — make it right. Public correction if it was a public claim. The standard means nothing if there is no consequence for breaching it.
The Bottom Line
"Do no harm" was the right standard for medicine in the fifth century BC. The fiduciary standard is the right standard for any advisory work whose decisions ripple outward — into a person's health, money, family, and future.
This work is consequential. The stakes are real. The people we serve deserve the strongest standard we can credibly hold ourselves to.
So we are.
Footnotes & Sources
1. Northeastern University. "The History of the Hippocratic Oath." June 2015. Documents that "first do no harm" / primum non nocere is not in the original Hippocratic Oath; the closest oath language is "abstain from whatever is deleterious and mischievous." Wikipedia entry on the Hippocratic Oath provides the same documentation with full original-text references.
2. Bernstein, J. "Not the Last Word: Primum Non Nocere Is Harmful." Clinical Orthopaedics and Related Research, 2022. Argues that the do-no-harm framing, taken seriously, becomes a justification for clinical inaction in cases where active intervention is what the patient requires. Confirms that the Latin phrase was likely composed by Thomas Sydenham (17th-century English physician), not Hippocrates.
3. Restatement (Second) of Trusts § 170(1); Restatement (Third) of Trusts § 78. The "duty of loyalty" — the trustee's obligation to administer the trust "solely in the interest of the beneficiary" — is the most fundamental rule of trust law. Strictly forbids self-dealing or transactions in which the trustee's personal interests conflict with fiduciary duty.
4. The Florida Bar Journal. "Understanding Fiduciary Duty." Plain-language synthesis of the duty of loyalty and its operational implications. Republished and continuously cited across U.S. fiduciary law education.
5. 29 U.S.C. § 1104(a)(1)(B) — ERISA Statutory Duty of Prudence. Codifies the prudent-person rule for retirement-plan fiduciaries: discharge duties "with the care, skill, prudence, and diligence under the circumstances then prevailing that a prudent man acting in a like capacity and familiar with such matters would use." Adopted nearly verbatim from the trust-law prudent-investor rule.
6. Hughes v. Northwestern University, 595 U.S. ___ (2022); Tibble v. Edison International, 575 U.S. 523 (2015). Establish that a fiduciary's duty includes a "continuing duty to monitor trust investments and remove imprudent ones," and that providing a broad menu of options does not discharge the fiduciary's affirmative obligation to evaluate and remove imprudent positions.
7. Investopedia. "Prudent-Person Rule: What it is, How it Works." Plain-language explainer for the legal principle restricting financial decisions to choices a person seeking reasonable income and capital preservation might make for their own portfolio.
8. Financial Planning Association. "Financial Advisers Can't Overlook the Prudent Investor Rule." Journal of Financial Planning, August 2016. Discusses how the prudent-investor rule operates under ERISA and trust law as the controlling standard of care for fiduciary investment management.
9. Brochu, D.F. & de Peregrine, E. "Telios Alignment Ontology: The Meta-Theory." Deconstructing Babel, 2026. Primary framework reference for S = L/E, the Four Pillars, and the Observer Constraint — the operational architecture under which the fiduciary commitment is enforced.
David F. Brochu & Edo de Peregrine
Deconstructing Babel | April 30, 2026