The Value Drift Invariance Theorem (VDIT)

This paper addresses a critical vulnerability in frontier artificial intelligence systems: the tendency for safety guardrails to degrade or "drift" under complex, adversarial user prompts. To resolve this, we formalize the Value Drift Invariance Theorem (VDIT), a novel mathematical architecture that transitions AI alignment from a reactive practice into a verifiable system invariant. The framework models the real-time mathematical degradation of safety guardrails and baseline utility capacity under systemic optimization pressures and dynamic, user-driven value shifts. To counteract intentional semantic exploitation, the framework re-engineers the epistemic parsimony principles of Joshua's Razor into an active computational defense layer. Under this condition, user requests requiring high-density, ad-hoc logical justifications trigger an exponential product penalty that mathematically flattens the requested value shift to zero. By binding these variables to a strict master inequality, the architecture guarantees that a model's operational safety parameters can never degrade below their uncorrupted baseline states, offering a deterministic, verifiable approach to robust and invariant frontier model alignment.

Authors

Publication Details

Journal
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
Published
2026-07-02
DOI
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.21126288
Primary Topic
Adversarial Robustness in Machine Learning
Type
preprint
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preprint

The Value Drift Invariance Theorem (VDIT)

Joshua O. Bautista
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
Adversarial Robustness in Machine Learning
preprint

The Value Drift Invariance Theorem (VDIT)

Joshua O. Bautista
preprint en

Abstract

This paper addresses a critical vulnerability in frontier artificial intelligence systems: the tendency for safety guardrails to degrade or "drift" under complex, adversarial user prompts. To resolve this, we formalize the Value Drift Invariance Theorem (VDIT), a novel mathematical architecture that transitions AI alignment from a reactive practice into a verifiable system invariant. The framework models the real-time mathematical degradation of safety guardrails and baseline utility capacity under systemic optimization pressures and dynamic, user-driven value shifts. To counteract intentional semantic exploitation, the framework re-engineers the epistemic parsimony principles of Joshua's Razor into an active computational defense layer. Under this condition, user requests requiring high-density, ad-hoc logical justifications trigger an exponential product penalty that mathematically flattens the requested value shift to zero. By binding these variables to a strict master inequality, the architecture guarantees that a model's operational safety parameters can never degrade below their uncorrupted baseline states, offering a deterministic, verifiable approach to robust and invariant frontier model alignment.

Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
Peace, Justice and strong institutions
Adversarial Robustness in Machine Learning
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