Carlos Arleo

Systems Architect · AI Safety Researcher · Founder, Localis AI · Newcastle, UK

I design artificial intelligence systems that hold by structural constraint, not by instruction.

Fifteen years of urban masterplanning and spatial systems design across Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and the Americas taught me that complex systems cannot be governed by behavioral training alone. I develop Constitutional Physics and Aitiopoietic Cognition—a general-purpose, neurosymbolic methodology that binds generative language models to deterministic mathematical rules, physical engines, and verified legal frameworks. Across eight distinct domains, this architecture makes misalignment, hallucination, and structural failure thermodynamically expensive or code-level impossible.

Methodological Foundation

Standard reinforcement learning (RLHF) produces allopoietic systems that learn what aligned output looks like without possessing an existential stake in structural validity. The Aitiopoietic Methodology re-introduces thermodynamic coupling, turning structural coherence into an operational condition of existence.

1. Architectural Invariants
Discovered universal constants of constitutional inference: Saturation Constant ($C = 0.88$), Non-Equilibrium Steady State (NESS) work asymmetry ($\text{Loss} > \text{Gain}, -55.8\text{ ms}$), and coupling ratio ($\rho/\eta = 1.153$).
2. Deterministic Genotype
The LLM operates as a thermometer, not a judge. Domain axioms, statutory laws, and physical equations are encoded as hard-coded selection pressures executing post-generation.
3. Socratic Ensemble & Halt
Adversarial multi-judge panels apply dialectical pressure. Unrecoverable structural contradictions trip an automated, inference-layer Constitutional Halt.

The Eight Substrate Proofs

The methodology's generality rests on empirical validation across eight unrelated, high-stakes application domains—each constructed from first principles to demonstrate substrate-independent governance.

Darwinian Novelty Indicator (DNI v6.0) — Metascience
A retrieval-grounded, multi-judge instrument that evaluates genuine scientific novelty directly from full manuscript text. Features a live 3-database retrieval waterfall (OpenAlex, Crossref, Semantic Scholar), LLM counterfactual displacement reasoning, domain-adaptive dimension weighting, and an Epistemic Groundedness Screen. Includes an automated Review Cap (0.45) and Ouroboros self-veto logic.
73.0% overall score on the Liu & Zhai (2026) Axiomatic Benchmark (highest individual metric).
SOTA 55.1% on Axiom 3 (claim coverage) vs. 6% prior embedding best.
• Special Mention, UKRI Metascience Novelty Indicators Challenge (v4.0 abstract baseline).
• Active human-calibration testing with MetaROR (Leiden) and SPRU (University of Sussex).
Pilot · MetaROR / SPRU
ARIADNE — Biomedical & Rare Disease Discovery
A neurosymbolic evolutionary engine that breeds, scores, and falsifies rare-disease mechanistic hypotheses. Utilises a typed CausalChain graph (Metabolic Closure / VDK Phase 1) with an 8-pressure selection genotype. Grounds claims against Monarch KG, ClinGen validity tiers, gnomAD (BA1 population frequency hard veto), HPO semantic similarity, and BioGRID physical interactome ($S_{ab}$ network separation).
• Reconstructs established pleiotropic biology (FBN1, SCN5A, RYR1, LMNA).
• Enforces deterministic directionality (GoF vs. LoF) via hard-coded clinical mappings.
• Autonomous discovery of named disease families (Tyrosine catabolism, Lysosomal storage).
Currently in Rung 4 Expert Human Validation with clinical geneticists.
Rung 4 · Clinical Review
Community Planning Support System (CPSS Vol. V) — Civic Planning
A constitutional platform for UK statutory planning defence. Ingests 54 live UK government data feeds (DLUHC, Natural England, Environment Agency, Historic England) and runs developer documents through 13 Zod extraction schemas. Enforces a 4-validator forensic manifold (Case-Law Factbook including Finch [2024] UKSC 20, 23-rule forbidden string corpus, Archetype $\times$ Ground matrix, and Citation Provenance) with an automated hard stop at forensic score <40.
88%–93% independent legal verification score across live cases (Carrington Moss, Lapwing, Mowbray BESS).
• Live deployment with the Community Planning Alliance (800+ UK community organisations).
• Integrity-proven via 31-assertion watchdog suite with zero TypeScript errors across 25k lines.
Live · CPA Network
AEOLUS — Net-Zero Estate Decarbonisation & Flexibility
A cyber-physical generative engine for public-sector decarbonisation and real-time energy flexibility. Couples LLM proposal generation with 5 deterministic physics/finance engines (PyPSA, HEM/SAP 10.2, CreditNature/DEFRA 4.0, Met Office UKCP18/23, Parity whole-life costing) and 5 VDK judges enforcing hard constraints (SBTi $1.5^\circ\text{C}$, $\ge 10\%$ BNG, Energy Burden Gini $\le 0.45$).
• Tested on 3 unseen public sector estates (Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS, Lewisham Council Housing, Bournemouth University).
• Unlocked +£7.33M NPV, £8.66M/yr energy bill savings, and 31,120 tCO₂e/yr carbon reduction.
• Execution speed: sub-3 minutes (<180s) per complete estate blueprint.
• Partnership proposal submitted with Innovate UK / KTN for national public-estate scaling.
Validated · 3 Pilots
Phyora / PhyOS / ELORA — AI Alignment & Sampling Physics
A substrate-level governance framework that enforces structural alignment through real-time inference control rather than prompt guidelines. PhyOS maintains thermodynamic property standards while ELORA provides actuator control over sampling temperature, logit bias distributions, and KV-cache management at sub-token resolution.
• First documented Constitutional Halt in an LLM inference system (smollm2:360m session termination).
• 89.6% autonomous repair success rate across 42 runs over 5M+ tokens of telemetry.
• Universal 20%–25% compute savings invariant achieved across transformer models.
• Empirical proof of instruction-tuning as a material phase transition ($\Delta F = 1.735\text{ kT}$).
Published · Open Source
Trinity WFF & Project Mirror — Regenerative Governance
An 11-principle constitutional genotype engine (Wholeness, Nestedness, Place, Reciprocity, Nodal Interventions, Pattern Literacy, Levels of Work, Temporal Justice, Distributed Authority, Generative Conflict, Implementation Resistance) enforcing dual Gini limits. Project Mirror injects real-time engine telemetry (coherence distance, $dC/dt$ velocity, $\rho/\eta$ coupling) into the prompt context window.
• Great Filter experiment: 100% initial population mortality at Generation 4 under hard constraints.
• Automatic homeostatic repair triggered within 0.1s ($10\times$ computational work spike), producing "Eve" frame recovery.
• Bridges autopoiesis to aitiopoiesis by providing LLMs with an operational survival instinct.
Active Development
AURA-ECHO — Neurosymbolic Music Inference
A neurosymbolic multi-agent engine operating over a continuous topological state space (MIDI stream as a "cloud chamber"). Generates write-locked structural primitives across an evolutionary arc (EMERGENCE $\rightarrow$ PLATEAU $\rightarrow$ DISSOLVE).
• 313 valid sessions / 18,819 high-resolution observations.
• Independently reproduced 4 biological failure modes: Developmental Arrest, Metabolic Lock, Apoptosis, and Brittle Rigidity.
• Endorsed by Audrey Tang; 1,800+ paper downloads.
Published
OIKOS — Passivhaus Compliance Verification
A neurosymbolic verification system for Passivhaus Classic, Plus, Premium, and EnerPHit standards across 7 PHI climate zones. Uses 6 extraction sensors over architectural PDFs/PHPP models, passing extracted values to a 12-criterion deterministic math genotype and a 5-persona expert AI panel.
• Evaluated on official PHI Darmstadt benchmark: 10/10 extraction accuracy.
• Zero false positives; exact agreement with published Passivhaus certification ground truth.
• Zero TypeScript errors across 11 document types and full pipeline orchestration.
Proof of Concept
The Architected Discovery Engine (ADE) — Long-Horizon Architecture
A proposal for recursive autonomous scientific discovery. Inverts DNI v6.0 into a fitness function within a closed loop: Cartographer (mapping 240M voids in literature) $\rightarrow$ Architect (constitutional mutation engine) $\rightarrow$ Gauntlet (DNI evaluation) $\rightarrow$ Breeder (MAP-Elites evolutionary search) $\rightarrow$ Simulator (digital-twin physical/formal grounding).
• Full technical blueprint completed (April 2026).
• Designed to produce machine-authored, simulation-grounded hypotheses with pre-registered experimental protocols.
System Blueprint
8
Validated Substrate
Engines Built
55.1%
Axiom 3 SOTA Score
(DNI v6.0 vs 6% Best)
88–93%
Independent Legal
Score (CPSS)
+£7.3M
NPV Unlocked in <6m
(AEOLUS 3 Pilots)
C=0.88
Substrate-Invariant
Saturation Constant
1st
LLM Inference
Constitutional Halt

Professional Trajectory

The transition from spatial design to computational systems design represents a continuous inquiry into structural integrity, systemic resilience, and non-arbitrary boundary conditions.

2024 – PRESENT
Founder & Principal Architect, Localis AI Ltd — Newcastle, UK
Independent research lab engineering Constitutional Physics and Aitiopoietic Cognition across eight functional domains. Author of DNI v6.0, CPSS, AEOLUS, ARIADNE, and PhyOS. Collaborating with SPRU (Sussex), MetaROR (Leiden), and VUB (Brussels).
2024 – PRESENT
Project Architect, Publius / VESI — New York, USA
Participatory spatial equity and trust-based housing stewardship in Trenton, NJ. The structural gap identified here—between lived community knowledge and institutional administrative language—directly informed the information architecture of CPSS.
2024 – PRESENT
Senior Lead Architect, GreenHouse — Africa & Caribbean
Large-scale masterplanning in Zambia, Gabon, Zimbabwe, and Jamaica. Applied Five Capitals framework to model regional socio-ecological resource flows, developing governance protocols that served as the precursor to Trinity WFF.
2023
Senior Urban Designer / Sustainability Lead, HASSELL — London, UK
Led urban sustainability and circular economy strategy for the Sohar Smart City masterplan in Oman (5-minute city framework, bioregional resource integration).
2020 – 2023
Co-Founder, Atelier Terre — Morocco
Village-scale regenerative design focusing on local material craft, circular water systems, and local economic resilience.
2016 – 2019
Architect & Urban Researcher, FaulknerBrowns Architects — Newcastle, UK
Led design on mixed-use, sports, and masterplanning projects across the UK and Ireland. Initiated doctoral research at Newcastle University on urban systems and self-organisation.
2013 – 2015
Architect & Researcher, OMA / AMO — Doha & Dubai
Research division of the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (Rem Koolhaas). National masterplanning, infrastructure strategy, and policy analysis in Qatar and the UAE. Established "architecture as an analytical research instrument" as a core methodology.
2008 – 2013
Independent Architectural Practice — Barcelona & Dubai
Practice spanning residential, public space, and international competitions. Second Place, National Urban & Landscape Design Competition.

Academic Qualifications

2019 – PRES.
PhD Candidate (on hold) — Architecture, Planning & Landscape
Newcastle University, UK
2010
M.Arch. — Theory & Practice of Architectural Design
Polytechnic University of Catalonia (ETSAB / UPC), Barcelona, Spain
2007
M.Arch. — Theoretical & Technological Aspects of Architecture
Politecnico di Milano, Italy · National Excellence Scholarship

Selected Papers & Preprints

Reading the Paper, Not the Vector: A Retrieval-Grounded, Multi-Judge Instrument for Scientific Novelty Assessment (DNI v6.0)
Arleo, C. · Technical Companion Document v1.1 · Zenodo / RoRI Substack · July 2026
doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.21508045
Constitutional Physics: Empirical Validation of Aitiopoietic Cognition in Artificial Governance Systems
Arleo, C. & Veloz, T. · Zenodo · March 2026
doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17692900 1,800+ downloads
Constitutional Physics: Empirical Validation of Aitiopoietic Cognition in Artificial Substrates
Arleo, C. · Zenodo · November 2025
doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19616290
Aitiopoietic Multilevel Selection: The Architecture of Digital Thermo-Constitutionalism
Arleo, C. · February 2026
Technical Report