Artificial Intelligence

Feedback Epistemic Equilibrium Law (FEEL) A Formal Stability Criterion for Coupled Reasoning and Oversight Systems

Authors: P. H. Antom

We present the Feedback Epistemic Equilibrium Law (FEEL), a formal stability theorem for artificial reasoning systems operating under corrective oversight. Standard control theory stabilises a plant using a controller assumed reliable by construction. FEEL removes this assumption: the feedback mechanism is itself a dynamical system with its own persistence, susceptibility to epistemic contamination, and potential for instability. We model the joint system as the affine recurrence Z_(t+1) = MZ_t + c where the block matrix M (A, -C; D, E)encodes intrinsic reasoning evolution (A) , corrective intervention (C), epistemic leak from reasoning into feedback (D), and feedback persistence (E), We prove that ρ(M) < 1 is necessary and sufficient for (i) existence and uniqueness of an equilibrium, (ii) global convergence from any initial condition, (iii) exponential stability with an explicit rate, and (iv) bounded epistemic-feedback disagreement. We characterise the failure regime ρ(M) >= 1, cataloguing divergence, oscillation, feedback amplification, and runaway correction cascades. We illustrate the criterion on a toy coupled system in which increasing the epistemic-leak strength alone — holding each subsystem’s standalone spectral radius fixed — drives the joint system through the predicted ρ(M) = 1 transition, confirmed across 200 random initial conditions. The result supplies a computable certificate for safe feedback in AI systems and identifies a structural gap in existing alignment frameworks: local stability of reasoning and feedback components does not imply global stability of their coupling.

Comments: 11 Pages.

Download: PDF

Submission history

[v1] 2026-07-06 19:47:16

Unique-IP document downloads: 56 times

ai.Vixra.org is a AI assisted e-print repository rather than a journal. Articles hosted may not yet have been verified by peer-review and should be treated as preliminary. In particular, anything that appears to include financial or legal advice or proposed medical treatments should be treated with due caution. ai.Vixra.org will not be responsible for any consequences of actions that result from any form of use of any documents on this website.

Add your own feedback and questions here:
You are equally welcome to be positive or negative about any paper but please be polite. If you are being critical you must mention at least one specific error, otherwise your comment will be deleted as unhelpful.