What question did this study set out to answer?

The primary aim is to explore how situated awareness can be leveraged to improve trust in large language models (LLMs).

May 29, 20260 citationsOpen Access

AI Trust and Situated Awareness: A Practice Theory Reframe

Key Points

The primary aim is to explore how situated awareness can be leveraged to improve trust in large language models (LLMs).
Introduced the practice bundle concept to guide LLMs in understanding practices.
Incorporated insights from human social sciences and practice theory.
Developed an autonomic loop concept for LLM enactment history.
Proposed that LLMs require more than API access for trust; they need contextual awareness.
Identified practice theory as a framework to develop a text-and-engagement apprenticeship for LLMs.
Outlined a system for maintaining the practice bundle through judge-and-smoother practices.

Abstract

For an LLM to be trusted to act as expected, it needs more than access to APIs — it needs the situated awareness a practitioner brings to the work: knowing where it is, what the goal is, what is at hand, and what would be a legitimate next step. The challenge has been how to express that knowing in a transmissible form. This essay draws on the human social sciences for the answer, looking to practice theory (Schatzki, Reckwitz, Shove) to introduce the practice bundle — a text-and-engagement form of apprenticeship through which an LLM is cued into a practice rather than taught it. (The essay was originally framed in terms of "the meaning layer" and a "practice recipe"; subsequent essays in the series sharpened both terms — see the editor's note inside the paper.) Unlike a carpenter who serves many clients, an LLM instance is enacted as a unique participant for one user, putting every user in the position of having a private practitioner. The essay closes by sketching an autonomic loop in which the bundle maintains itself through judge-and-smoother practices acting on the enactment history — a thesis the second essay develops, the third essay implements in twelve steps, and the fourth essay demonstrates on a concrete calendar-stewardship case.

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