Evaluating Epistemic Guardrails in AI Reading Assistants: A Behavioral Audit of a Minimal Prototype

arXiv:2604.27275v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Large language model (LLM) reading assistants are increasingly used in settings that require interpretation rather than simple retrieval. In these contexts, the central risk is not only error or unsafe output, but interpretive displacement: the transfer of meaning-making work from reader to system. This paper examines that problem through the concept of epistemic guardrails, defined here as constraints on how an artificial intelligence (AI) syste