Before Judgment Literature Review and Novelty Audit
Judgment-Object Divergence in AI-Mediated Strategic Reasoning: from broad epistemic mediation to latent-intent hypothesis divergence.
Supporting research record: Scurtu, L. (2026). Before Judgment. How artificial intelligence can change the problem before a human. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22177289
Audit question
Does judgment-object divergence identify a distinct mechanism in AI-mediated strategic reasoning, or does existing research already explain the claim through epistemic mediation, changed problem formulation, representational asymmetry, anchoring and human-oversight failure?
Four literature streams
- Problem formulation and mental representation.
- Epistemic mediation, agency and autonomy.
- Oversight, anchoring and independent judgment.
- Social reasoning, motives and latent intent.
Novelty determination
The broad phenomenon is established. The strongest candidate contribution is an integrated, falsifiable test of whether early AI exposure changes latent-intent hypothesis distributions and whether those changes mediate later strategic judgment.
Final audit judgment
Verdict: D — Narrow mechanism candidate; broad framing not novel. Before Judgment should not claim discovery of AI-mediated epistemic influence, changed problem formulation or insufficient final oversight. Its strongest remaining position is a precise, falsifiable proposal concerning early AI exposure, latent-intent hypotheses and downstream human judgment.