Paper Seven established that the definition of the robot has been distorted by the Independence Illusion: the belief that physical embodiment is a structural requirement for AI agency rather than one historically contingent interface option. Paper Eight examines what this misidentification produces when it operates inside systems — robots, organizations, and analytical frameworks — that must classify agent-interface boundaries. This paper introduces Interface Boundary Disorder (IBD): the systematic misclassification of which components of a human-AI-world system are agents and which are interfaces. IBD operates in two directions. The forward error mistakes the interface for the agent — treating the robot's body as the source of its agency. The reverse error mistakes the agent for the interface — treating AI as a tool through which human agency is enacted, when AI has become the primary computational agent. Drawing on Bowker and Star's (1999) classification theory, this paper demonstrates that IBD is not a random error but a structurally predictable consequence of applying industrial-era classification schemas to post-industrial agency configurations. The substrate competition between carbon and silicon computation is presented as the energy-layer instantiation of the same argument: the more efficient interface joins the flows of the natural world rather than fighting them. Organoid intelligence research (Smirnova et al., 2023) confirms that substrate competition trajectory favors AI substrate independence. The Integration Principle is presented as the energy-physics translation of Paper Seven's theoretical argument.
Kyungae Ahn (Wed,) studied this question.