A Public Theory of Distillation Resistance via Constraint-Coupled Reasoning Architectures

Computer Science > Artificial Intelligence [Submitted on 26 Mar 2026] A Public Theory of Distillation Resistance via Constraint-Coupled Reasoning Architectures Peng Wei, Wesley Shu Knowledge distillation, model extraction, and behavior transfer have become central concerns in frontier AI. The main risk is not merely copying, but the possibility that useful capability can be transferred more cheaply than the governance structure that originally accompanied it. This paper presents a public, trade-secret-safe theoretical framework for reducing that asymmetry at the architectural level. The core claim is that distillation becomes less valuable as a shortcut when high-level capability is coupled to internal stability constraints that shape state transitions over time. To formalize this idea, the paper introduces a constraint-coupled reasoning framework with four elements: bounded transition burden, path-load accumulation, dynamically evolving feasible regions, and a capability-stability coupling condition. The paper is intentionally public-safe: it omits proprietary implementation details, training recipes, thresholds, hidden-state instrumentation, deployment procedures, and confidential system design choices. The contribution is therefore theoretical rather than operational. It offers a falsifiable architectural thesis, a clear threat model, and a set of experimentally testable hypotheses for future work on distillation resistance, alignment, and model governance. Subjects: Artificial Intelligence (cs.AI); Cryptography and Security (cs.CR); Computers and Society (cs.CY); Machine Learning (cs.LG) Cite as: arXiv:2603.25022 [cs.AI]   (or arXiv:2603.25022v1 [cs.AI] for this version)   https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2603.25022 Focus to learn more Submission history From: Peng Wei [view email] [v1] Thu, 26 Mar 2026 04:38:58 UTC (11 KB) Access Paper: HTML (experimental) view license Current browse context: cs.AI < prev   |   next > new | recent | 2026-03 Change to browse by: cs cs.CR cs.CY cs.LG References & Citations NASA ADS Google Scholar Semantic Scholar Export BibTeX Citation Bookmark Bibliographic Tools Bibliographic and Citation Tools Bibliographic Explorer Toggle Bibliographic Explorer (What is the Explorer?) Connected Papers Toggle Connected Papers (What is Connected Papers?) Litmaps Toggle Litmaps (What is Litmaps?) scite.ai Toggle scite Smart Citations (What are Smart Citations?) Code, Data, Media Demos Related Papers About arXivLabs Which authors of this paper are endorsers? | Disable MathJax (What is MathJax?)