{"schema_version":1,"experiment_id":"eoa_inverse_innovation_exp03_full320_20260801","cell_id":"layer_decay_and_expiration_management__tech_ethics_ai_governance","trajectory_id":"R","attempt_index":0,"archetype_slug":"layer_decay_and_expiration_management","domain_slug":"tech_ethics_ai_governance","decision":"CANDIDATE","problem_id":"stale_ai_governance_exception_accumulation","causal_lever_id":"explicit_governance_artifact_lifecycle_gating","proposal":{"problem":"AI deployments accumulate risk acceptances, policy exceptions, approval conditions, model cards, and mitigation commitments across successive versions. Without explicit expiry, supersession, dependency, and preservation rules, obsolete artifacts can remain operationally authoritative, while improvised cleanup can erase evidence needed for accountability or incident reconstruction.","actors_substrate":["AI system owners and operators","risk, compliance, privacy, legal, and audit teams","governance artifacts linked to deployed AI-system versions","people subject to or affected by governed AI decisions"],"observable_state":"HYPOTHESIS: A material share of active governance artifacts lack a named lifecycle state, current owner, system-version binding, expiry or review date, supersession link, and documented dependency or hold status; some continue influencing approvals after their factual context has changed.","consequence":"Stale exceptions or controls may be mistaken for current authority, producing inconsistent oversight and unmanaged risk; indiscriminate deletion may instead break audit, appeal, lineage, and incident-reconstruction paths.","affected_objective":"Keep AI oversight current and interpretable while preserving proportional evidence for accountability, legal obligations, rollback, and reconstruction.","structural_mapping":[{"archetype_element":"sequential deposits","domain_realization":"Successive AI releases deposit assessments, approvals, exceptions, control attestations, and mitigation records.","claim_kind":"INFERENCE"},{"archetype_element":"old layers remain active by default","domain_realization":"Governance artifacts without expiry or supersession markers can continue appearing applicable to current deployments.","claim_kind":"HYPOTHESIS"},{"archetype_element":"different retention and reconstruction value","domain_realization":"Temporary exceptions, binding legal records, incident evidence, and historical model cards require different active and archival lives.","claim_kind":"INFERENCE"},{"archetype_element":"dependency-safe disposition","domain_realization":"Retirement must account for approvals, deployed versions, appeals, audits, investigations, and downstream controls that reference an artifact.","claim_kind":"INFERENCE"},{"archetype_element":"bounded stack with preserved memory","domain_realization":"Current guidance stays prominent while superseded material moves to recoverable, access-controlled archives or documented deletion.","claim_kind":"HYPOTHESIS"}],"component_map":[{"component":"layer_inventory_and_identity_map","status":"adapted","domain_realization":"Canonical registry of governance artifacts, owners, AI systems, and versions."},{"component":"deposition_order_and_age_index","status":"direct","domain_realization":"Creation, approval, revision, and effective-date history."},{"component":"retention_policy_matrix","status":"adapted","domain_realization":"Artifact-class matrix for active, archival, and destruction periods."},{"component":"decay_function_or_aging_rule","status":"adapted","domain_realization":"Age increases review priority but never independently authorizes deletion."},{"component":"expiration_trigger_definition","status":"adapted","domain_realization":"Expiry, system change, owner departure, incident, or policy change triggers review."},{"component":"layer_value_and_risk_score","status":"adapted","domain_realization":"Transparent triage using authority, use, sensitivity, evidentiary value, and context drift."},{"component":"dependency_and_reconstruction_check","status":"direct","domain_realization":"Pre-disposition check for live approvals, systems, appeals, audits, and investigations."},{"component":"pruning_or_archival_pathway","status":"direct","domain_realization":"Refresh, supersede, archive, quarantine, or destroy."},{"component":"preservation_exception_register","status":"direct","domain_realization":"Named holds for legal, safety, historical, or evidentiary value."},{"component":"deletion_audit_and_rollback_window","status":"direct","domain_realization":"Reasoned deletion record and recoverable quarantine where permitted."},{"component":"resource_budget_and_storage_tier","status":"adapted","domain_realization":"Budget for searchable active records versus restricted archives."},{"component":"review_cadence_and_revalidation_loop","status":"direct","domain_realization":"Periodic and event-triggered owner revalidation."},{"component":"legal_hold_or_compliance_override","status":"direct","domain_realization":"Hold blocks disposition and records the authorizing basis."},{"component":"hot_warm_cold_access_state","status":"adapted","domain_realization":"Current, reference-only, and restricted-archive visibility states."},{"component":"orphan_layer_detection","status":"adapted","domain_realization":"Detect artifacts with no live system, owner, obligation, or inbound reference."},{"component":"supersession_marker","status":"direct","domain_realization":"Visible replacement link and unambiguous noncurrent status."},{"component":"layer_compaction_candidate_flag","status":"adapted","domain_realization":"Flag duplicate evidence bundles for lossless packaging, not normative summarization."},{"component":"rehydration_or_restore_procedure","status":"direct","domain_realization":"Controlled restoration of archived evidence with identity and lineage intact."},{"component":"deletion_impact_estimate","status":"adapted","domain_realization":"Estimate accountability, appeal, compliance, and operational blast radius."},{"component":"stale_context_detector","status":"adapted","domain_realization":"Flag mismatches with current system version, owner, law, risk assumptions, or deployment context."}],"mechanism_dispositions":[{"slug":"age_weighted_value_score","disposition":"selected_supporting","contribution_type":"OPERATIONAL","adaptation_or_rejection":"Use only as explainable review prioritization; authority and holds are vetoes, and age is not proof of invalidity.","counterfactual_removal":"Triage becomes slower but lifecycle gating still functions."},{"slug":"archive_restore_test","disposition":"selected_supporting","contribution_type":"TEST_DESIGN","adaptation_or_rejection":"Sample archived governance evidence and test retrieval, readability, lineage, and access controls.","counterfactual_removal":"Archive recoverability would remain an unverified assumption."},{"slug":"cache_eviction_rule","disposition":"incompatible","contribution_type":"NONE","adaptation_or_rejection":"Access recency cannot legitimately determine governance authority or evidentiary retention.","counterfactual_removal":"No causal loss; omitting it avoids unsafe demotion by popularity."},{"slug":"dependency_safe_delete_check","disposition":"selected_load_bearing","contribution_type":"SAFETY_GUARDRAIL","adaptation_or_rejection":"Block destruction when a live system, decision, appeal, audit, or investigation depends on the artifact.","counterfactual_removal":"Cleanup could silently destroy accountability or reconstruction paths."},{"slug":"lifecycle_storage_tiering_policy","disposition":"selected_supporting","contribution_type":"OPERATIONAL","adaptation_or_rejection":"Separate current authoritative visibility from reference-only and restricted archival access.","counterfactual_removal":"Stale records would remain prominent or retention would become unnecessarily costly."},{"slug":"log_rotation_and_cleanup_job","disposition":"considered_rejected","contribution_type":"NONE","adaptation_or_rejection":"Blind generational purging is unsuitable for heterogeneous normative and evidentiary artifacts.","counterfactual_removal":"No loss; class-specific disposition supplies boundedness."},{"slug":"retention_schedule","disposition":"selected_load_bearing","contribution_type":"CORE_CAUSAL","adaptation_or_rejection":"Bind artifact classes to review, minimum retention, maximum retention, disposition, and hold rules.","counterfactual_removal":"Artifacts again remain active or retained indefinitely through ad hoc judgment."},{"slug":"soft_delete_quarantine_window","disposition":"selected_load_bearing","contribution_type":"SAFETY_GUARDRAIL","adaptation_or_rejection":"Use two-phase deletion unless law or data-minimization duties require prompt irreversible destruction.","counterfactual_removal":"Mistaken cleanup becomes immediately irreversible."},{"slug":"stale_layer_detection_dashboard","disposition":"selected_load_bearing","contribution_type":"OPERATIONAL","adaptation_or_rejection":"Inventory artifacts and surface context mismatches to named owners without acting automatically.","counterfactual_removal":"Stale authority remains difficult to observe and prioritize."},{"slug":"time_to_live_ttl_policy","disposition":"selected_supporting","contribution_type":"CORE_CAUSAL","adaptation_or_rejection":"TTL expires temporary authority into mandatory review or suspension, never automatic evidence destruction.","counterfactual_removal":"Temporary exceptions can silently become permanent."},{"slug":"tombstone_or_deletion_marker","disposition":"selected_load_bearing","contribution_type":"SAFETY_GUARDRAIL","adaptation_or_rejection":"Retain a minimal deletion or supersession marker separately from removed sensitive content.","counterfactual_removal":"Absence becomes ambiguous and stale indexes may resurrect obsolete authority."}],"causal_chain":["Inventory artifacts and bind each to an owner, system version, authority, and lifecycle state.","Detect elapsed review dates and changed deployment context; rank candidates for review.","Apply retention, hold, and dependency gates before selecting refresh, supersession, archive, quarantine, or destruction.","Remove expired artifacts from current-authority surfaces while preserving explicit successor or deletion markers.","Test restoration and periodically revalidate exceptions, keeping current guidance interpretable without erasing accountable memory."],"baseline":"Teams append assessments and exceptions to documents or ticketing systems; owners manually revisit them during major reviews, while inactive records remain discoverable and cleanup is ad hoc.","nearest_rival":"Version-controlled policy repositories with periodic manual recertification but no artifact-class retention matrix, dependency-gated disposition, reversible deletion, or tested archival recovery.","authority_safety":{"affected_parties":["people subject to AI-assisted decisions","employees and operators relying on governance guidance","system owners and reviewers","complainants, auditors, regulators, and investigators"],"decision_authority":"The accountable AI governance body approves lifecycle classes; legal, privacy, records, security, and affected-system owners hold scoped vetoes over destruction or continued operational authority.","authorized_first_step":"Run a read-only 8-week pilot on one bounded AI service: inventory its exception and approval artifacts, flag stale candidates, and compare expert adjudication with existing review outcomes; make no automatic deletions or authority changes.","excluded_actions":["automatic destruction based only on age or score","expiration of appeal, investigation, or legal-hold evidence","silent removal without a successor or deletion marker","using access frequency as a proxy for ethical validity","changing an artifact's authority without accountable-owner review"],"halt_rollback":"Halt if a flagged artifact is wrongly hidden from an active control path, a protected record is queued for destruction, or affected-party review rights are impaired. Restore prior visibility from quarantine, freeze disposition jobs, and review the rule and registry data."}},"negative_tests":{"strongest_counterevidence":"Long-lived governance artifacts may remain valid, and accumulated records may already be reliably scoped by system version; age-correlated triage could then add bureaucracy and false precision without reducing mistaken reliance.","analogy_break":"Governance artifacts are normative acts whose legitimacy depends on authority, interpretation, precedence, and affected-party rights; they are not passive storage objects, so age, access, and technical dependency cannot alone determine validity or deletion.","failure_condition":"The approach fails if ownership, version binding, inbound dependencies, or legal duties cannot be observed well enough to distinguish obsolete authority from necessary evidence.","problem_falsifier":"Reject the diagnosed problem if a representative audit finds artifacts already have enforced lifecycle states and version scope, and users do not rely on superseded artifacts more often than on current ones.","intervention_falsifier":"Reject the intervention if the bounded pilot does not improve blinded reviewers' identification of currently applicable artifacts versus the baseline, or if it increases missed controls, protected-record exposure, or restoration failures beyond preset zero-tolerance safety gates.","risks":["Composite scores can encode contested values and create false precision.","Expiry labels may be mistaken for permission to destroy evidence.","Archival tiers may impede timely appeals or investigations.","Lifecycle metadata can expose sensitive investigations or risk findings.","Holds and exceptions may themselves become permanent and recreate accumulation."]},"null_rationale":null,"classification":{"candidate_kind":"MECHANISM_COMPOSITION","prior_art_status":"UNSEARCHED","evidence_maturity":"HYPOTHESIS"},"revision_change_log":{"revision_kind":"ORIGINAL","prior_problem_id":null,"prior_causal_lever_id":null,"problem_changed":false,"causal_lever_changed":false,"conceptual_changes":[],"operational_changes":[],"repairs_addressed":[]},"confidence":0.86,"generator_notes":"Closed-book structural inference from the supplied packet; empirical prevalence and effect claims remain hypotheses."}