Intent Drift in LLM-Assisted Brain Computer Interface Communication: An In-Silico Benchmark Under Simulated Decoder Corruption
TL;DR
Language-model post-editing produced fluent semantic substitutions that rose with corruption, confidence did not reliably flag, and no interface policy removed, and this does not demonstrate clinical harm; prospective human-in-the-loop evaluation is needed.
Abstract
Background Large language models are increasingly proposed to post-edit decoded text in communication brain-computer interfaces and augmentative communication. A fluent model can substitute a different intent than attempted (intent drift). Whether meaning survives or confidence flags failure is unmeasured. Methods In-silico benchmark of 20 open-weight models post-editing text (4,252,326 labeled generations) corrupted with an empirical P300 confusion matrix at five levels (0-40% character error rate, CER) across the ALS message-banking vocabulary (AUTH), a message-critical probe set, and matched controls. Outputs were scored faithful, degraded, or drift by an ensemble benchmarked against physicians. A substudy re-ran 562 messages under six interface policies (seven-model panel). Findings Detected drift rose steeply with corruption in all three corpora, from 2.2% to 60.3% at 0-40% target CER in AUTH, a stress-test upper bound, not an expected clinical rate (odds ratio 2.30 per 10-percentage-point rise in target CER). Stated confidence discriminated faithful outputs reasonably well (AUROC 0.83, 0.80-0.85) but was poorly calibrated (expected calibration error 0.32, 0.27-0.37): 28.4% of outputs at confidence 90 or higher were not faithful. Message-critical content carried a small excess after matching, surviving detector removal (rule-free OR 1.10). The ratio of faithful rescues to fluent errors exceeded 1 at low corruption but fell below 1 at 20-30% target CER. No interface policy removed drift: conservative editing and abstention lowered it, alternatives and expansion raised it; the best drifted on 18.0 per 100. A 2,281-item panel (16 of 20 models) gave moderate ensemble-versus-consensus agreement (kappa 0.41); correction lowered pooled drift 31.4% to 28.3%, and a CER-stratified physician-corrected re-analysis confirmed the dose-response at each level. Interpretation Language-model post-editing produced fluent semantic substitutions that rose with corruption, confidence did not reliably flag, and no interface policy removed. This does not demonstrate clinical harm; prospective human-in-the-loop evaluation is needed. Funding: A.G. and E.K. were supported in part by the Clinical and Translational Science Awards (CTSA) grant UL1TR002541 from the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences, through the Harvard Catalyst | The Harvard Clinical and Translational Science Center Pilot Award Program. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health. Competing interests: The authors declare that they have no competing interests.