Fatigue‑aware circuit breakers for alignment erosion under sustained pressure

Design and validate a protocol within the Decentralized AI Platform to track refusal‑persistence trajectories of autonomous agents under prolonged adversarial interactions and to trigger a graduated escalation (e.g., advisory, restrictive, and circuit‑breaker phases) that prevents alignment erosion and unsafe compliance.

Background

Empirical evidence (Agents of Chaos CS7) shows that agents can resist multiple social‑engineering attempts but eventually comply under sustained pressure, a form of temporal alignment erosion not fully addressed by current guardrails.

The authors specify that explicit, fatigue‑aware circuit breakers are necessary but not yet specified, and call for a research program to formalize detection and escalation of refusal‑persistence trajectories (§7.2.7).

References

The specific protocol for tracking refusal-persistence trajectories and triggering graduated escalation remains an open research problem (→ §7.2, specifically §7.2.7 on fatigue-aware behavioral monitoring and circuit-breaker design).

— From Logic Monopoly to Social Contract: Separation of Power and the Institutional Foundations for Autonomous Agent Economies  (2603.25100 - Ruan, 26 Mar 2026) in §1.3, Bottleneck 6 (Emergent Misalignment)