Vulnerability Laundering in AI-Mediated Regimes

Function in corpus

Names the mechanism by which AI-mediated governance regimes can appear fully accountable while structurally preventing consequence from reaching those who produce constraints.

Details

Accountability can be fully visible — traceable, attributable, auditable — while systematically failing to function. This paper introduces vulnerability laundering as the structural name for that configuration. The core distinction: accountability in form (legible structures through which actions can be traced, roles identified, outcomes recorded) versus accountability in function (consequence enters the future trajectory of a locus capable of modulating constraint production in a trajectory-binding form). A regime may satisfy the first completely while structurally preventing the second. Vulnerability laundering is defined as: a regime configuration in which formally intact accountability architecture is preserved while systematically organizing consequence such that exposure terminates in loci structurally incapable of reintroducing that exposure into constraint production. Trajectory-binding exposure is formalized through three jointly-required aspects: reachability (future state-space reduction), constraint attachment (internalization into constraint structure), and non-neutralizability (cannot be absorbed within admissible regime transitions without identity-altering reorganization). This differs from salience misalignment (Paper 22) — which concerns exposure decoupling at the level of who is affected — by focusing on whether consequence returns to constraint-producers. It complements Working as Designed (Paper 40) by naming the mechanism behind alignment failure without malfunction in AI-mediated regimes. Connected papers: Salience Misalignment; Vulnerability as a Structural Condition; Witnessing Under Vulnerability; Legitimacy as a Finite Structural Resource; Working as Designed; Interruption Authority Under Scale.

Availability

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