arXiv AI By Ilai Shraga, Roei Eshel, Lior Gorelik

Approved Too Late: Verdict Staleness in LLM-Guarded Self-Adaptive Systems

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The paper investigates how approvals issued by a large language model (LLM) guardrail for self‑adaptive systems can become stale between the time of check and the time of use, creating a TOCTOU hazard. It introduces three metrics for verdict freshness, evaluates them across five SAS environments, and proposes the Freshness‑Bounded Shield (FBS) to estimate an approval’s validity horizon without a plant‑dynamics model, reducing expiry rates significantly. The study also audits LLM judges and formulates a freshness contract requiring approvals to remain valid at use time.

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