Two Conformal Constructions for Adaptive Within-Document AI-Text Screening

Abstract:We study false-alert control when screening for text generated by artificial intelligence (AI). The screening procedure selects document prefixes and detectors from observed evidence and may stop before exhausting its inspection budget. We give two finite-sample constructions under document-level exchangeability between human calibration documents and a new null document, with no restriction on dependence among tokens within a document. Construction A registers a finite family of prefix-detector scores and allocates a false-alert budget across their conformal ranks. A union bound protects any executed subset of that family. Construction B calibrates the complete-path maximum of a development-fixed adaptive policy. Each partial-path maximum is bounded by the complete maximum, so a terminal conformal rank protects early stopping without splitting the error budget. We prove marginal control of any false alert across the permitted inspection path and derive necessary calibration counts for rejection. We also state oracle testing, distribution-shift, and independent-audit bounds with their additional assumptions. Both constructions protect stopping within their specified scope; neither proof constructs an e-process or justifies multiplying conformal ranks. Detection power and computational savings remain questions for empirical evaluation.

Methodology (stat.ME); Computation and Language (cs.CL)

arXiv:2609.31547 [stat.ME]

(or arXiv:2609.31547v1 [stat.ME] for this version)

https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2609.31547 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite (pending registration)

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