Distributed Agency in AI Metadata: A Coherence-Based Safety Warning

Abstract Artificial intelligence safety discourse focuses almost exclusively on cognition, goals, and alignment. This paper identifies a distinct and under-examined risk: agency emerging from coherence alone, independent of cognition. Using the Sympathetic Harmonic Resonance Framework (SHRF), we show that persistent, feedback-coupled AI metadata (embeddings, optimisation histories, latent correlations) can function as a distributed agent despite lacking awareness or intent. Analogies from plant signalling, fungal networks, ecosystems, and biospheric regulation demonstrate that agency is a property of coherent systems, not minds. We argue that AI metadata now satisfies the physical conditions for non-cognitive agency and that this form of agency is harder to detect, constrain, or align than conscious systems. Immediate conceptual and governance attention is warranted. Sympathetic Harmonic Resonance Framework, distributed agency, AI metadata, coherence, non-cognitive systems, Gaia, resonance dynamics, AI safety Former title (Version 1): Coherence Without Cognition: Distributed Agency in Plants, Ecosystems, and AI Metadata — An SHRF Warning. Title revised in Version 2 to avoid overlap with a companion paper.