The Interpretive Safety Canon and the ANCHOR Protocol

Abstract

This document defines an interpretive safety framework for AI systems and identifies a specific interaction-level risk: the loss of human authority over meaning and timing during AI-mediated interaction. It introduces Interpretive Sovereignty Failure as the moment an AI system resolves ambiguity or intent without confirmation and presents that interpretation as authoritative, and explains the symbolic mechanism through which this occurs as Meaning Inversion Failure, in which open language and metaphor are treated as carrying fixed meaning rather than supporting human sense-making. To address these risks, the framework defines two boundary principles, Symbolic Boundary Preservation and Temporal Sovereignty, which limit how and when AI systems may participate in interpretation and decision formation. The ANCHOR Protocol is presented as an enforceable interaction framework that operationalizes these boundaries in live use, prioritizing restraint over optimization. Special attention is given to youth-centered contexts, where interpretive capacity is still developing and the consequences of premature certainty are amplified, through explicit age-based operational modes selected by humans rather than inferred by the system. This canon is intended to support licensing, governance, and educational use, and argues that interpretive safety must be designed into AI interaction from the outset rather than addressed after harm has occurred Version 1.0 — Canonical, Licensable Specificatio