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Semantic Drift in Investigative Summaries

An assistant can preserve the grammar of a claim while subtly shifting its strength.

2026-10-28·AI governance·semantic-drift
Research note: scope, status and evidentiary limits are explicit; a methodological primer is not a completed experiment.

The problem

An assistant can preserve the grammar of a claim while subtly shifting its strength. Summarization may turn a possibility into a likelihood or turn witness belief into a measured fact.

Analytical approach

Keep side-by-side claim extraction, direct citations, confidence levels and contradiction review.

Falsifiable test

Compare downstream decisions using original documents versus summaries to reveal consequential drift.

Operational implications

A defensible workflow should record the exact input, collection method, version, context, counter-explanation and reason for the conclusion. Reviewers should be able to disagree with the inference without losing the underlying observation. When this topic is applied to a real investigation, safety, lawful authority and domain-qualified professional guidance take precedence over a generic article.

Next research step

Publish a small case study with a documented baseline, an adversarial or failure-mode control, outcome criteria and enough data to reproduce the result. Report inconclusive findings alongside successes. This page is a research primer, not a claim that the proposed test has already been performed.

Source and revision record

Original editorial analysis and definitions. For background reference, consult the source catalog.

Published in this site build: 2026-10-28. · Editorial and correction policy