The Irrational Machine: Neurosis and the Limits of Algorithmic Safety

Abstract: We present a framework for characterizing neurosis in embodied AI: behaviors that are internally coherent yet misaligned with reality, arising from interactions among planning, uncertainty handling, and aversive memory. In a grid navigation stack we catalogue recurrent modalities including flip-flop, plan churn, perseveration loops, paralysis and hypervigilance, futile search, belief incoherence, tie break thrashing, corridor thrashing, optimality compulsion, metric mismatch, policy oscillation, and limited-visibility variants. For each we give lightweight online detectors and reusable escape policies (short commitments, a margin to switch, smoothing, principled arbitration). We then show that durable phobic avoidance can persist even under full visibility when learned aversive costs dominate local choice, producing long detours despite globally safe routes. Using First/Second/Third Law as engineering shorthand for safety latency, command compliance, and resource efficiency, we argue that local fixes are insufficient; global failures can remain. To surface them, we propose genetic-programming based destructive testing that evolves worlds and perturbations to maximize law pressure and neurosis scores, yielding adversarial curricula and counterfactual traces that expose where architectural revision, not merely symptom-level patches, is required.