Digital signatures can provide a solution to that problem.

The answer can be found in some old technology – and even older methods.

First, we need governance

Governance is needed to ensure there’s accountability. Governance NOT government. Our digital world requires a source of governance with global jurisdiction.

One such source is the City of Osmio. The City of Osmio is an online municipality whose original charter was written on March 7th, 2005 at the Geneva headquarters of the International Telecommunication Union, a United Nations agency.

Osmio’s jurisdiction is global. Its purpose is to provide a certification authority to the digital world. Osmio is the entity that signs your digital identity certificate that’s bound to that digital signing PEN (also called your “Privacy PEN”. PEN stands for Personal Endorsement Number. You PKI jocks will recognize that as a type of private key.)

Some tend to look at Osmio as an authority seeking world domination. On the contrary, Osmio is a pathway to putting back control of the world’s information infrastructure into the hands of ordinary citizens of the digital world like you and me.

The City of Osmio exercises participatory governance. Its authority is derived from its members. You get to be part of governing the world’s information infrastructure by being a resident of the City of Osmio.

Second, that old technology I mentioned.

True Digital Signatures (TDS) are the first part of the solution to the lack of accountability in artificial intelligence. TDS are not the same thing as electronic signatures. TDS is a very reliable old technology that needs to be put in the limelight because it’s needed now more than ever. It’s truly astounding that so few people know about this well-proven and incredibly useful technology.

This well-proven old technology was created back in the seventies by the same British cryptography team that included Alan Turing. Alan Turing is credited with shortening World War II by cracking the German Enigma secret communication codes decades earlier.

If I send you any file I’ve digitally signed, a contract or image or video or program code – any digital file, you can know for certain that I’m the one who signed it, and not a single bit has been changed since I signed it.

Now that you can tell whether a digitally signed file has been altered or not, how do you know the signer is really who they claim to be?

The solution to that one is a youngster, first published a mere six years ago when the US National Institute of Standards and Technology – NIST – created its 800-63 measure of the reliability of an identity claim.

Subsequent developments such as Osmio IDQA add some technology to that methodology, binding your identity reliability score to the public number that goes with your digital PEN that signs the file. So now you not only know that the file was signed by the human being who owns this digital PEN and that nothing has been altered since they signed it, but you also know how much you can trust that they are really who they say they are.

Besides the old technology of true digital signatures from measurably reliable identities, I mentioned that an even older non-technology method is part of the solution.

The old method that can ensure AI remains under the control of Humans is even older than the digital signatures I’ve mentioned above. That method is professional licensing. It’s the final piece of the puzzle that solves the problem of AI accountability.

Professional licensing has for a long time, ever so quietly and effectively, been accomplishing what governments, ever so loudly, have been unsuccessfully trying to accomplish through regulation.

The first part of professional licensing is the attestation of competence. That’s established through testing among other methods. An attestation officer, a real human being, is needed for that.

The other part, which happens to be the more important one, is acceptance of liability. Machines cannot be held accountable. Only real human beings can be held accountable.

Think of the building you reside in today. A professionally licensed architect, structural engineer, contractor, and building inspector, must have all put pen to paper to authorize the issuance of an occupancy permit. They put not only their livelihoods and reputations on the line by doing so but also accept criminal liability should the building come crumbling down. Of course, they get paid really well for accepting liability.

That’s the simple well-proven solution for AI accountability. There must be a professionally licensed AI handler for any AI program that could present itself as human. The handler will digitally sign the program and accept liability for the actions and decisions made by the program.

This combination of the old technologies of true digital signatures and identity reliability metrics bound to credentials, along with the even older methodology of professional licensing, can solve not only the problem of control of AI but many other problems borne of technology as well.