A Co-Evolutionary Theory of Human-AI Coexistence: Mutualism, Governance, and Dynamics in Complex Societies

Somyajit Chakraborty's paper, "A Co-Evolutionary Theory of Human-AI Coexistence: Mutualism, Governance, and Dynamics in Complex Societies," published on arXiv (2604.22227), argues that classical robot ethics, particularly Asimov's laws, is too narrow for today's adaptive, generative, and embodied AI systems. The author proposes a shift from master-tool obedience to 'conditional mutualism under governance'—a co-evolutionary relationship where humans and AI develop, specialize, and coordinate, with institutions ensuring reciprocity, reversibility, psychological safety, and social legitimacy.

The framework formalizes coexistence as a multiplex dynamical system across physical, psychological, and social layers, incorporating reciprocal supply-demand coupling, conflict penalties, developmental freedom, and governance regularization. The model yields conditions for existence, uniqueness, and global asymptotic stability of equilibria. Key findings show that reciprocal complementarity strengthens stable coexistence, while ungoverned coupling can produce fragility, lock-in, polarization, and domination basins. The paper concludes that human-AI coexistence should be designed as a co-evolutionary governance problem, supporting a charter that permits bounded AI development while preserving human dignity, contestability, collective safety, and fair distribution of gains.