Operationalising Extended Cognition: Formal Metrics for Corporate Knowledge and Legal Accountability
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arXiv
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| Format: | Preprint |
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2025
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| _version_ | 1866908610994372608 |
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| author | Perrier, Elija |
| author_facet | Perrier, Elija |
| contents | Corporate responsibility turns on notions of corporate \textit{mens rea}, traditionally imputed from human agents. Yet these assumptions are under challenge as generative AI increasingly mediates enterprise decision-making. Building on the theory of extended cognition, we argue that in response corporate knowledge may be redefined as a dynamic capability, measurable by the efficiency of its information-access procedures and the validated reliability of their outputs. We develop a formal model that captures epistemic states of corporations deploying sophisticated AI or information systems, introducing a continuous organisational knowledge metric $S_S(φ)$ which integrates a pipeline's computational cost and its statistically validated error rate. We derive a thresholded knowledge predicate $\mathsf{K}_S$ to impute knowledge and a firm-wide epistemic capacity index $\mathcal{K}_{S,t}$ to measure overall capability. We then operationally map these quantitative metrics onto the legal standards of actual knowledge, constructive knowledge, wilful blindness, and recklessness. Our work provides a pathway towards creating measurable and justiciable audit artefacts, that render the corporate mind tractable and accountable in the algorithmic age. |
| format | Preprint |
| id |
arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2510_16193 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2025 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | Operationalising Extended Cognition: Formal Metrics for Corporate Knowledge and Legal Accountability Perrier, Elija Artificial Intelligence Corporate responsibility turns on notions of corporate \textit{mens rea}, traditionally imputed from human agents. Yet these assumptions are under challenge as generative AI increasingly mediates enterprise decision-making. Building on the theory of extended cognition, we argue that in response corporate knowledge may be redefined as a dynamic capability, measurable by the efficiency of its information-access procedures and the validated reliability of their outputs. We develop a formal model that captures epistemic states of corporations deploying sophisticated AI or information systems, introducing a continuous organisational knowledge metric $S_S(φ)$ which integrates a pipeline's computational cost and its statistically validated error rate. We derive a thresholded knowledge predicate $\mathsf{K}_S$ to impute knowledge and a firm-wide epistemic capacity index $\mathcal{K}_{S,t}$ to measure overall capability. We then operationally map these quantitative metrics onto the legal standards of actual knowledge, constructive knowledge, wilful blindness, and recklessness. Our work provides a pathway towards creating measurable and justiciable audit artefacts, that render the corporate mind tractable and accountable in the algorithmic age. |
| title | Operationalising Extended Cognition: Formal Metrics for Corporate Knowledge and Legal Accountability |
| topic | Artificial Intelligence |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.16193 |