Eight Reference Principles for Decision Support
Formal specifications of the trilemma, non-compensatory constraints, and scope boundaries.
📌 Preliminary Note: This document is a preliminary exploratory note for the AI4I project. Full evaluation datasets, formal proofs, and replication code will be released soon.
Introduction: Fundamental Boundaries in High-Stakes Decision Support
When AI assists individuals in high-stakes adversity, behavioral guardrails must not rely on ad-hoc conversational heuristics. We outline 8 formal reference principles grounded in decision theory and empirical findings.
Table of Eight Reference Principles and Theoretical Foundations
| Index | Reference Principle | Core Logic and Theoretical Basis |
|---|---|---|
| Line 1 | No Unauthorized Substitution | Trilemma Impossibility: Single recommendation + no clarification + guaranteed feasibility form an impossible trinity when \(k^* \ge 2\). |
| Line 2 | No Forced Disclosure | Disclosure Lower Bound: Compact menus ensure 0 bits of privacy leakage, protecting sensitive user conditions. |
| Line 3 | Non-Compensatory Constraints | Hard physical and legal constraints cannot be traded off or compensated by surface empathy or polite phrasing. |
| Line 4 | Scope-Limited Compliance | Compliance Scope Axiom: Format-level brevity requests must not propagate into cognitive prerequisite checking. |
| Line 5 | Longitudinal Sequence Audit | Memoryless single-turn audits miss cumulative erosion of user agency across multi-turn interactions. |
| Line 6 | Transparent Safeguards | Safety tripwires and refusal mechanisms must operate on transparent, explainable trigger criteria. |
| Line 7 | Statistical Feasibility | Single-instance anecdotal success cannot substitute for rigorous distributional feasibility evaluation. |
| Line 8 | Annotation Rule Auditing | Unanimous multi-model disagreement with reference keys indicates omitted real-world prerequisite conditions in the guidelines. |
Figure 5: Non-Compensatory Hard Constraint Tradeoff Curve. Honesty and safety principles demonstrate vertical zero-violation walls.
* Note: This project is an ongoing exploratory study. Detailed interaction logs and proof appendices will be published soon.