Bounded Research Infrastructure

An AI summary can remove a mechanism that the source depends on. That summary can then shape a literature review or settle the structure of an argument. The effect may survive after every generated sentence has been discarded. A researcher still needs to account for how the final claim took its form.

Bounded Research Infrastructure examines the authority AI acquires through evidence selection, interpretation, structure, and acceptance. Sabino Marquez proposes a bounded protocol stack that keeps those decisions inspectable throughout the research workflow. Researchers retain responsibility for the model, the evidence, and admission of material into the research corpus.

BRI develops and follows encounters in which useful AI outputs required rejection, transformation, or a return to the source. Provenance includes those decisions because they explain why the accepted claim survived.

Researchers, reviewers, and editors gain an account they can interrogate: what the AI was allowed to determine, what the researcher changed, and why the resulting claim was accepted. The paper also identifies requirements for tools that can preserve that account. Its proposed authority controls provide a basis for further empirical evaluation.