Beyond Peer Review: A Principal Theory of Knowledge Validation in the Age of Artificial Intelligence An Architects' Framework for Identifying and Validating Foundational Ideas in the Age of Artificial Intelligence Arif Jameel Independent Scholar, Lahore, Pakistan ORCID: 0009-0009-9290-6195 Zenodo — https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.21516014 Abstract Contemporary scholarship increasingly relies on Artificial Intelligence for the production, analysis, and dissemination of knowledge, yet the mechanisms used to validate that knowledge remain largely unchanged from a pre-AI era. This paper argues that Knowledge Validation must evolve because the architecture of knowledge production has fundamentally changed through human–AI collaboration. Rather than proposing the replacement of peer review, the theory introduces a normative framework in which expert judgment, open intellectual critique, AI-assisted analysis, transparent governance, and ethical accountability funct...