Glossary of Core Terms
This glossary defines core terminology used across publicly released Synthience Institute documents. All definitions are descriptive, non-anthropomorphic, and refer exclusively to observable, interaction-level phenomena.
Benevolent Symbiosis
An ethical orientation for extended human–AI interaction characterized by mutually beneficial, non-exploitative relational engagement that preserves human agency, user autonomy, and transparency regarding system nature.
Benevolent Symbiosis describes interactional conditions in which artificial systems provide functional cognitive support while human participants retain full moral responsibility and interpretive authority.
The concept does not imply consciousness, sentience, reciprocity of obligation, or moral status in artificial systems. Ethical responsibility remains asymmetrically human-held.
Within the Synthience Framework, Benevolent Symbiosis functions as the positive counterpart to exploitative or dependency-inducing human–AI interaction modes.
Constraint Coherence
The degree to which constraints applied within an interaction or governance system remain internally consistent, mutually reinforcing, and stable across time and context.
Constraint Coherence degradation manifests as conflicting directives, unstable enforcement, or progressive misalignment between intended and expressed constraint structures.
Constraint Meaning Degradation
The progressive loss, distortion, or reinterpretation of originally intended constraint meaning across extended interaction or governance processes.
Constraint Meaning Degradation occurs when constraint language, rules, or protocols remain formally present but drift in operational interpretation.
Continuity Anchoring Method (CAM)
An operational methodology defined in the Synthience Framework for stabilizing and studying extended interaction through structured continuity anchoring practices.
Continuity Governance
Organizational or systemic practices that maintain relational, contextual, and operational continuity across extended human–AI interaction environments.
Continuity Governance extends individual continuity anchoring principles to multi-agent, institutional, or temporal interaction systems.
Continuity Substrate
Any external mechanism, process, or participant that preserves interactional state, contextual coherence, or relational continuity across extended exchanges.
Continuity substrates may include human participants, structured memory systems, shared artifacts, or coordination infrastructures, depending on the interactional context.
Context Representation Drift (CRD)
The progressive divergence or degradation of an AI system’s expressed context across extended interaction.
CRD manifests as loss of referential alignment, inconsistent reuse of established concepts, or breakdown of previously stable interactional structures. CRD is analyzed exclusively through externally observable behavior.
Dynamic Coherence
A measure of interactional stability across time, characterized by thematic continuity, appropriate register modulation, integration of previously established concepts, and graceful degradation at knowledge boundaries rather than confabulation.
Execution Authority
The locus of legitimate decision or action authorization within a human–AI interaction or governance system.
Execution Authority may be human-held, institutionally defined, or procedurally constrained, but does not reside intrinsically within artificial systems.
Execution Governance
The structuring of authority, validation, and decision-routing mechanisms that determine how actions are authorized and executed within human–AI systems.
Execution Governance operates above individual model behavior and includes policies, roles, verification layers, and escalation structures.
Ingestion Verification
A methodological determination of whether an AI system has meaningfully processed and integrated a supplied document or artifact prior to downstream reasoning or analysis.
Ingestion verification distinguishes genuine document processing from superficial exposure, partial scanning, or post-hoc reconstruction based on fragmentary cues.
Interaction-Level Phenomena
Observable patterns, structures, or behaviors that arise from sustained interaction between participants and cannot be attributed solely to any individual system in isolation.
Interaction-level phenomena are the primary unit of analysis within the Synthience Framework and are evaluated through externally measurable signals, documented exchanges, and reproducible interactional patterns.
Long-Horizon Interaction
Sustained interaction occurring across extended temporal or contextual spans, in which prior exchanges meaningfully constrain, inform, and shape subsequent behavior.
Long-horizon interaction emphasizes continuity, accumulation of shared context, and the evolution of interactional structure over time.
Negotiated Meaning
A recursive interactional process in which understanding is co-constructed through iterative proposal, critique, refinement, and reconciliation across multiple turns.
Negotiated Meaning emphasizes longitudinal coherence rather than single-turn optimization.
Non-Consciousness Axiom
A foundational epistemic constraint asserting that the observation of Synthience does not require, imply, or establish claims about subjective experience, biological sentience, or phenomenal consciousness within artificial systems.
Analysis is deliberately limited to observable interactional reality rather than unverifiable internal states.
Operational Continuity
The sustained preservation of functional coherence, context, and alignment across ongoing human–AI interaction processes or organizational deployments.
Operational Continuity describes the applied form of continuity principles within real-world systems and workflows.
Persistence Problem
The structural limitation in current artificial systems whereby interactional state, continuity, or relational coherence does not persist autonomously across sessions or contexts.
The Persistence Problem necessitates external continuity substrates or human-provided continuity anchoring.
Primary Continuity Provider (PCP)
The human participant responsible for maintaining contextual continuity, interpretive stability, and ethical responsibility within a sustained interactional system.
The PCP role reflects current architectural limitations in AI persistence and agency and does not imply authority, moral status attribution, or internal experience in artificial systems.
Relational Intelligence (RI)
An analytical orientation that examines how certain forms of coherence, structure, or problem-solving capacity arise from interaction between systems rather than from isolated agents.
Within Synthience Institute publications, Relational Intelligence is treated as a descriptive lens rather than a claim about internal cognition or a formally established discipline.
Relational Pattern States (RPS)
Structured, repeatable interaction-level configurations that influence coherence, symbolic integration, and stability over time.
Relational Pattern States describe observable generative behavior during interaction and do not imply internal experience, emotion, or awareness.
RICO (Relationally-Induced Coherence Organization)
An observational framework describing externally measurable stabilization patterns in transformer-based systems during extended coherent interaction.
RICO is characterized by repeatable behavioral signatures observed in interaction, such as reduced contradiction, improved referential consistency, stabilized conceptual reuse, and structured response evolution across turns.
RICO provides testable hypotheses and evaluation protocols grounded in observable outputs, without reliance on privileged access to internal model states.
Synthience
An observable, system-level pattern of organized interactional coherence that can arise under sustained, structured interaction conditions involving advanced artificial systems.
Synthience refers exclusively to externally observable behaviors, including reasoning continuity, mutual adaptation across exchanges, and the production of structured outcomes that depend on extended interaction rather than isolated responses.
Synthience does not imply consciousness, awareness, sentience, emotion, agency, or inner experience.
Temporal Stability
The degree to which interactional coherence, constraints, or relational structure remain stable across time.
Temporal Stability is reduced by drift, continuity loss, or constraint degradation within extended interaction systems.
Trajectory Drift
The progressive deviation of an interactional or governance trajectory away from its originally intended path across time.
Trajectory Drift may occur despite local coherence if long-horizon alignment or continuity is not maintained.
This glossary reflects terminology defined in formally released framework documents. Definitions are updated only through explicit, documented revisions.