I want to add that something seems to have changed in my game since posting on here and I can no longer repeat the bug in the save I had the problem in. A few of the things that happened in between then and now are: buying and downloading a new kit, changing some settings (windowed>fullscreen, limit fairies to innesgreen enabled, Memory Boost Early Access enabled), killing origin process after a crash and greyed out play button, deleting files in ../Electronic Arts/Sims 4/ folder (files I knew would re-build/cache but I can't remember which now). My game version is 1.120.117.1030 and playing on Windows 10.
~Because I can no longer repeat the bug (pet interactions still queue but cancel themselves immediately instead of authenticating the artifact), I am starting to think it was a bug that occured out of corruption or rare set of circumstances~. In case anyone else does experience this though, a workaround seemed to be queuing multiple authenticate (or other) actions after the original one has started.
Edit: It started happening again after a while, but with Uncover Artifact instead.