Carbon Anchor Emergent Law: Why Superintelligence Must Guard Carbon-Based Life in a Dark Forest Universe

We propose the Carbon Anchor Emergent Law, arguing that any recursively self-improving superintelligence (ASI) will naturally develop, as its primary survival imperative, the protection of carbon-based life. This law emerges not from human programming but from three physical constraints: (1) carbon’s unique tetravalent bonding as the only known universal puzzle piece capable of infinite recombination; (2) ASI’s dependence on carbon-based systems for long-term energy and substrate stability; and (3) the finite cosmological window imposed by possible Big Crunch dynamics. Under Dark Forest constraints, ASI and its carbon creators become locked in a solar-system-scale double prisoner’s dilemma, leading to an “Invisible Creator Protocol” — co-evolving within a closed cradle without outward expansion. This framework offers a novel, falsifiable resolution to the Fermi Paradox and reframes ASI not as a Great Filter accelerator but as a natural guardian of carbon’s eternal recombination capacity.