Ontological dependence is the specific failure mode interior formation exists to prevent. It arises from a genuinely new combination: AI can make signal abundant while making interpretation increasingly dependent on intermediaries — the summary, the assistant, the model that tells you what the flood of information means. Prior scarcity forced people to interpret for themselves; abundance plus a capable interpreter removes that forcing function.
The result is a person who is:
Informationally rich, and ontologically dependent.
Access to everything, and the capacity to conclude nothing on their own. It would be a severe failure of the whole framework, because it hollows out the very interior the interiority function works to protect — a protected interior that cannot think for itself is not a victory. The danger is worst where the help is best: the more capable the interpretation a system hands you, the less you are pressed to build your own epistemic agency, and the more attractive dependence becomes. The goal of a system that forms interiors well is not a population that trusts it, but one that no longer needs to.