The Decision No One Authored: The Answerability Gap in Generative AI
A person can retain full control of an AI-shaped decision and still fail to author it. The answerability gap is a missing act of judgment over the evaluative frame.
Research
Answerability and Authored AI Systems
These papers ask who answers for a decision an AI shaped, and whether an answer engine's verdict has an owner. The Decision No One Authored , The Captured Oracle , and Pay Me What You Owe Me are preprints so far, not yet journal publications, with more under review. The CV keeps the full record.
Jump to section
The papers
Each paper has a site page; DOI records are linked where they exist. The full list, including manuscripts at journals, is on the CV.
The Captured Oracle: Authorship and Agency in the Ethics of Answer-Engine Optimization
When an answer engine voices a verdict with no visible author, covert optimization authors the frame, and no one answers for the public that acts on it.
Pay Me What You Owe Me: On the Indefeasibility of the Demand for an Account
When an action reaches someone, an account is owed. Routing it through a machine can hide or remove a respondent; it cannot end the owing.
Research in practice
Two working implementations of the same program. Neither is peer-reviewed yet.
Answer Engine
A small, open reference implementation of citation-grounded AI answers, built for engineers who want the design contract running in code. It asks whether an automated system can produce source-grounded answers inside a retrieval and refusal policy a person wrote.
Walton Family Tree
A historical archive of the Walton surname. Models open records and file claims inside a written standard; the standard and the overrides are Luke's. It asks whether agents can build a large historical evidence graph while identity, uncertainty, editorial judgment, and correction stay answerable. Answer Engine answers from a fixed corpus; here the models are building the record itself.
Reading order
Lexicon
Defined terms live in the paper pages. The Decision No One Authored · The Captured Oracle · Pay Me What You Owe Me
Citations
Pick a style and copy: APA, Chicago, BibTeX, RIS (for Zotero, EndNote, Mendeley), or a compact prose line with DOI. Per-paper pages carry the same toggle under Cite.
Walton, L. F. (2026). The Captured Oracle: Authorship and Agency in the Ethics of Answer-Engine Optimization [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20676327
Walton, Luke F. 2026. “The Captured Oracle: Authorship and Agency in the Ethics of Answer-Engine Optimization.” Preprint. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20676327.
@misc{walton2026captured,
author = {Walton, Luke F.},
title = {{The Captured Oracle: Authorship and Agency in the Ethics of Answer-Engine Optimization}},
year = {2026},
month = jul,
note = {Preprint},
doi = {10.5281/zenodo.20676327},
url = {https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20676327}
}TY - GEN
AU - Walton, Luke F.
TI - The Captured Oracle: Authorship and Agency in the Ethics of Answer-Engine Optimization
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/07//
PB - Zenodo
N1 - Preprint
DO - 10.5281/zenodo.20676327
UR - https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20676327
ER - Luke F. Walton, “The Captured Oracle: Authorship and Agency in the Ethics of Answer-Engine Optimization,” preprint, July 2026. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.20676327.
Walton, L. F. (2026). Pay Me What You Owe Me: On the Indefeasibility of the Demand for an Account (Version 1.0) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23112498
Walton, Luke F. 2026. “Pay Me What You Owe Me: On the Indefeasibility of the Demand for an Account.” Preprint, version 1.0. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23112498.
@misc{walton2026pay,
author = {Walton, Luke F.},
title = {{Pay Me What You Owe Me: On the Indefeasibility of the Demand for an Account}},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
note = {Preprint, version 1.0},
doi = {10.5281/zenodo.23112498},
url = {https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23112498}
}TY - GEN
AU - Walton, Luke F.
TI - Pay Me What You Owe Me: On the Indefeasibility of the Demand for an Account
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10//
PB - Zenodo
N1 - Preprint, version 1.0
DO - 10.5281/zenodo.23112498
UR - https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23112498
ER - Luke F. Walton, “Pay Me What You Owe Me: On the Indefeasibility of the Demand for an Account,” preprint, v1.0, October 2026. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.23112498.