Interpretability perimeter

The interpretability perimeter designates the exact zone in which an AI system can produce a legitimate interpretation from a given corpus, without crossing the authority boundary. It bounds what the corpus allows to assert, and what it forbids to infer.

In interpretive governance, this perimeter is not implicit. It must be declared, tested, and maintained, otherwise AI fills gaps by plausibility, at the cost of interpretive debt.

Definition

Interpretability perimeter is the set of:

authorized statements: propositions the corpus explicitly supports (or supports by governed deduction);
validity conditions: context, date, version, jurisdiction, audience, exceptions;
enforceable limits: what must lead to a legitimate non-response rather than extrapolation.

This perimeter functions as a “reading zone”: inside, interpretation is permitted; outside, it becomes ungoverned.

Why this is critical in AI systems

The corpus is always incomplete: AI naturally attempts to complete what is missing.
Nuance depends on context: without bounds, AI generalizes a particular case.
The model mixes sources: AI can import external elements incompatible with the canon.

Practical indicators (symptoms)

AI responds with confidence to a question that exceeds the corpus’s actual scope.
A condition (date, region, exception, version) is omitted, but the response is given as universal.
The system transforms an example into a general rule.
External elements appear in the response without being explicitly authorized.

Minimum components of an interpretability perimeter

Domain: covered subject, terminology, granularity level.
Time: validity date, update frequency, version power.
Jurisdiction: territory, applicable standards, constraints.
Exceptions: edge cases, exclusions, non-response conditions.
Authorized sources: internal canon vs accepted external sources.

What the interpretability perimeter is not

It is not a “summary” of the corpus. It is an authorization bound.
It is not a promise of exhaustiveness. It is a legitimacy rule.
It is not a single technical mechanism. It can exist on the open web, in RAG, or in closed agentic environments.

Minimum rule (enforceable formulation)

Rule PI-1: a response is legitimate only if it remains within the declared interpretability perimeter. Any question that exceeds this perimeter must produce a legitimate non-response or a response explicitly marked as bounded inference.

Example

Question: “Does this policy apply to all subsidiaries, in all countries, for the current year?”

Typical error: universal response, without verifying jurisdiction, date, or exceptions.

Governed output: request the jurisdiction or version, or switch to legitimate non-response if the corpus does not allow to assert.

Reading guidance

Use Interpretability perimeter to read a site, corpus, source, or model output as something that changes over time. Publication, persistence, citation, and recency metadata are not enough to prove current authority.

What to verify

Whether the content or assumption still belongs to the current state of the corpus.
Whether older versions, memory objects, or external echoes are still influencing outputs.
Whether correction has been published, linked, propagated, and resorbed.
Whether the cost of maintaining the concept has become a form of interpretive debt.

Practical boundary

This concept is not a deletion mandate. It is a maintenance discipline. Some historical traces remain useful, but they must not be treated as current authority unless their status, version, and relationship to the active canon are explicit.

Interpretability perimeter