Asymmetric Coexistence Theory: Governance-Aware Certification of Non-Capturing Assistance

Asymmetric Coexistence Theory (ACT) is a governance-aware theory for certifying non-capturing assistance in relations between unequally capable agents. Future intelligent societies may include humans, artificial intelligence systems, institutions, collective agents, future constituencies, and adaptive systems whose capabilities differ greatly. In such settings, assistance can increase short-term performance while reducing the assisted party’s long-term ability to understand, refuse, repair, learn, contest, exit, recover, form values, generate independent descriptions of the world, or act before irreversible choices close. This paper develops ACT as a framework for evaluating whether assistance preserves agency under asymmetric power, dependency, uncertainty, and changing social or technical conditions. The theory introduces a minimal kernel consisting of typed agency spaces, asymmetric regimes, admissible baselines, counterfactual agency estimands, dependency debt, recoverability, and certification claims. It also provides extension modules for semantic capture, time-critical decisions, successor identity, recursive certification, audit independence, adaptive challenge evidence, certification governance, runtime hazards, non-dominating enforcement, model uncertainty, historical baseline corruption, coalitional pressure, scarce certification resources, multi-scale composition, and stochastic capture risk. The main contribution is to treat non-capturing assistance as a runtime assurance problem, not as an omniscient proof of autonomy. An ACT certificate states its claim, scope, assumptions, evidence, argument, defeaters, residual risk, lifecycle state, monitoring conditions, revalidation triggers, audit traces, challenge evidence, certification base, governance records, enforcement boundaries, and fallback obligations. Human-AI skill atrophy and dependency are important examples, but the theory is formulated more generally for asymmetric intelligent coexistence across human, institutional, artificial, collective, and future-oriented agents. ACT is relevant to AI governance, human-AI interaction, automation, autonomy, safety assurance, non-domination, capability preservation, institutional design, and the long-term governance of advanced intelligent systems.