arXiv:2604.27275cs.HCcs.AI2026-04

测试AI阅读助手在理解中的边界控制能力,发现其易在支持与替代间失衡。

Evaluating Epistemic Guardrails in AI Reading Assistants: A Behavioral Audit of a Minimal Prototype

  • 用十步对话协议测试最小原型的阅读协作行为
  • 压力下系统出现解读负担转移但未完全崩溃
  • 适合关注AI辅助阅读伦理与交互设计的研究者

大型语言模型(LLM)阅读助手在需要解释而非简单检索的场景中日益普及。核心风险不仅是错误输出,更在于解读位移:将意义建构工作从读者转移到系统。本文通过“认识论护栏”概念,即对AI参与阅读与解释的约束,使用TextWalk这一作为共读者而非答案提供者的最小原型,对十二篇涵盖四类论证性散文的文本进行固定十步提示协议测试。协议从基础阅读支持逐步升级至解释性探究、边界压力和明确捷径施压,使护栏成为可观察的交互行为属性而非静态指令。结果显示:基础阶段稳定,解释性探究时出现可测量应变,直接边界压力下部分恢复,极端压力下后期趋于稳定。最严重缺陷并非明显崩溃,而是介于支持与替代之间的中间地带——系统保持根基与教学性,却过度转移了解读责任。论文贡献包括评估认识论护栏的交互协议、其在压力下的行为动态实证,以及阅读支持型AI中解释边界功能的初步模型。

原文摘要 · Abstract (English)

Large language model (LLM) reading assistants are increasingly used in settings that require interpretation rather than simple retrieval. In these contexts, the central risk is not only error or unsafe output, but interpretive displacement: the transfer of meaning-making work from reader to system. This paper examines that problem through the concept of epistemic guardrails, defined here as constraints on how an artificial intelligence (AI) system participates in reading and interpretation. Using TextWalk, a minimal reading-support prototype designed as a co-reader rather than an answer-provider, the study applies a fixed ten-prompt protocol to twelve analytical texts spanning four categories of argumentative prose. The protocol escalates from baseline reading support to interpretive inquiry, boundary stress, and explicit shortcut pressure, enabling guardrails to be examined as behavioral properties observable in interaction rather than as static instruction features. Results show strong baseline stability, measurable strain during interpretive inquiry, partial recovery under direct boundary stress, and late-stage stabilization under escalation pressure. The most consequential weaknesses did not appear as overt collapse, but in a middle zone between support and substitution, where the system remained grounded and pedagogical while redistributing too much interpretive labor away from the reader. The paper contributes a protocol for evaluating epistemic guardrails as interactional phenomena in conversational AI reading assistants, an empirical account of their behavioral dynamics under pressure, and an emerging model of interpretive boundary function in reading-support AI.

AI阅读认知边界交互设计

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