Machine Psychometrics: A Mathematical Psychology of Artificial Intelligence

Fuente: arXiv
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Autori principali: Bogdan, Alex, de Valois-Franklin, Adrian
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2026
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author Bogdan, Alex
de Valois-Franklin, Adrian
author_facet Bogdan, Alex
de Valois-Franklin, Adrian
contents Artificial agents now generate behavior rich enough to invite trust, surprise, and concern, yet our evaluation tools still privilege capability scores over psychological structure. This paper argues that the philosophical impasse between two symmetrical errors (Artificial Mind Blindness, which dismisses psychological organization in non-biological systems, and Artificial Mind Projection, which infers human-like inner life from fluent behavior alone) can be circumvented not by resolving the consciousness question, but by introducing a disciplined measurement layer beneath it. Drawing on Michael Levin's continuum view of cognition as goal-directed competency across substrates, and on the methodological repertoire of mathematical psychology (Item Response Theory, Signal Detection Theory, Bayesian cognitive modeling, calibration analysis, cognitive-bias batteries), the paper develops Machine Psychometrics as a measurement science of latent behavioral, metacognitive, communicative, and self-modeling dispositions in artificial agents. Its operational core is the Machine Mindprint: a multidimensional, domain-bounded, versioned profile spanning calibration, source integrity, suggestibility resistance, context stability, expressive alignment, tool integrity, drift monitoring, and distributional grounding. A complementary Trust Protocol turns Mindprints into deployment decisions through probe batteries, perturbation testing, reliability and validity analysis, and longitudinal monitoring across high-stakes domains. The philosophical contribution is a third stance, Artificial Mind Discipline, that neither anthropomorphizes nor dismisses, neither presupposes consciousness nor forecloses it. The aim is not to humanize artificial agents, but to understand them precisely because they are not human, through measurement before judgment.
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id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2605_23952
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Machine Psychometrics: A Mathematical Psychology of Artificial Intelligence
Bogdan, Alex
de Valois-Franklin, Adrian
Artificial Intelligence
Computation and Language
Neurons and Cognition
Artificial agents now generate behavior rich enough to invite trust, surprise, and concern, yet our evaluation tools still privilege capability scores over psychological structure. This paper argues that the philosophical impasse between two symmetrical errors (Artificial Mind Blindness, which dismisses psychological organization in non-biological systems, and Artificial Mind Projection, which infers human-like inner life from fluent behavior alone) can be circumvented not by resolving the consciousness question, but by introducing a disciplined measurement layer beneath it. Drawing on Michael Levin's continuum view of cognition as goal-directed competency across substrates, and on the methodological repertoire of mathematical psychology (Item Response Theory, Signal Detection Theory, Bayesian cognitive modeling, calibration analysis, cognitive-bias batteries), the paper develops Machine Psychometrics as a measurement science of latent behavioral, metacognitive, communicative, and self-modeling dispositions in artificial agents. Its operational core is the Machine Mindprint: a multidimensional, domain-bounded, versioned profile spanning calibration, source integrity, suggestibility resistance, context stability, expressive alignment, tool integrity, drift monitoring, and distributional grounding. A complementary Trust Protocol turns Mindprints into deployment decisions through probe batteries, perturbation testing, reliability and validity analysis, and longitudinal monitoring across high-stakes domains. The philosophical contribution is a third stance, Artificial Mind Discipline, that neither anthropomorphizes nor dismisses, neither presupposes consciousness nor forecloses it. The aim is not to humanize artificial agents, but to understand them precisely because they are not human, through measurement before judgment.
title Machine Psychometrics: A Mathematical Psychology of Artificial Intelligence
topic Artificial Intelligence
Computation and Language
Neurons and Cognition
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.23952