kapable

Kapable is a neologism used mainly in speculative discussions of artificial intelligence and autonomous systems to describe agents that combine high task competence with verifiable safety and ongoing self-monitoring. Unlike simply capable systems, kapable agents are presumed to maintain alignment with human intent through mechanisms such as constraint enforcement, self-assessment, and controllability by operators.

The term appears in online AI ethics and governance discourse in the last decade, as a blend of "capable" and "adaptive" or "capability with accountability." Its usage is informal and varies by author; there is no formal standard definition.

In conceptual models, kapable agents rely on modular architectures that include planning and learning components, monitoring and anomaly detection, and safety layers that restrict actions when default or unsafe conditions are detected. Evaluation emphasizes task success, robustness to novel environments, transparency of decisions, and the ability for human operators to override or audit behavior.

Critics caution that "kapable" can be vague or hype-prone, conflating capability with governance, and warn that verification of self-assessment and alignment remains technically challenging. The lack of standard criteria makes comparisons across systems difficult.

See also: capability, autonomy, alignment, human-in-the-loop.