Beyond Hallucination: Semantic Laundering, Semantic Stewardship, and Prompting Aikido in Human-AI Collaboration
Abstract:
The primary conversation surrounding generative artificial intelligence centers on factual fabrication: hallucination. While hallucination matters, it represents a crude and easily detected failure mode. This paper identifies a second, quieter epistemic risk: semantic laundering. Large language models produce exceptionally fluent, coherent, and
I have just posted a trio of new research white papers to SSRN. These represent the latest output from the Kennedy Idea Propulsion Laboratory and the culmination of my work over the last month to move AI beyond “utilitarian drift.” This is the cycle of incremental efficiency gains that ultimately generates no transformative insight.
This paper has been published and and a PDF of it is available at https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5397903
By Dennis Kennedy
August 19, 2025
Kennedy Idea Propulsion Laboratory Working Paper No. 2025-01
License: This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0
I recently presented to a great audience at the State Bar of Michigan Information Technology Law Section’s Annual conference about AI. I described my presentation as an introduction to AI for not-overly-technical lawyers. And it was a lot of fun. Although I’m now concentrating on speaking a private events, it was great to do a
By Dennis Kennedy
September 10
