Tethering AI to Blockchain for Responsible and Trustworthy AI

Artificial intelligence (AI) systems are rapidly being adopted across industries, but there are valid concerns about controlling these autonomous systems and ensuring they remain aligned with human values.

This whitepaper proposes combining blockchain technology with AI to provide verifiable governance, traceability, and even reversibility of AI systems. Blockchain's tamper-evident ledger provides immutable records that can anchor an AI system's provenance and data pedigree. Smart contracts can encode governance rules and contingency plans to constrain unfettered AI. Together, these techniques can "tether" AI to blockchain networks to create responsible and trustworthy AI systems.

BTA (Blockchain Tethered AI) Benefits

Tethering AI to blockchain networks mitigates risks and enhances trust in AI:

• Provenance: Immutable pedigree anchors prevent data falsification or AI forgeries.
• Governance: Democratic on-chain rules align AI with stakeholder values.
• Observability: Runtime monitoring detects problems early before harm.
• Accountability: Tamper-evident logs ensure responsibility for all changes.
• Recourse: Ability to reverse AI changes reconstitutes user trust.
• Security: Blockchain architecture provides defense against hacking.

The AI Governance Challenge

AI systems are black boxes whose inner workings are opaque to humans. Once deployed, AI agents can take autonomous actions that are difficult to predict and control. There are risks of software bugs, hacking, adversarial examples, goal misalignment, and other issues causing AIs to operate outside expected parameters, sometimes with harmful consequences.

Governing AI behavior through hardcoded rules and constraints is insufficient. The complexity of real-world environments means developers cannot anticipate all necessary rules up front. There also needs to be a mechanism to monitor AI systems and introduce new governance constraints after deployment based on actual operational data.

How Blockchain Helps

Blockchain provides a decentralized tamper-evident ledger secured through cryptography. Transactions recorded on a blockchain are immutable and auditable. Smart contracts execute business logic on blockchains in a transparent and verifiable manner.

These capabilities can help constrain and control AI systems. Blockchain can track the provenance of AI to ensure its pedigree is genuine. An AI's training data sources, modeling assumptions, and development lifecycle can be recorded transparently.

Smart contract rules encoded on a blockchain can govern allowed AI behaviors and data usage. Centralized or federated authorities are not needed to enforce governance policies. Consensus protocols built into blockchain networks allow stakeholders to collectively administer policies in a democratic manner.

If an AI system violates governance rules, smart contracts can trigger contingency actions like reversing transactions, freezing activity, or even rolling back software changes. Tamper-evident logs ensure any changes are observable to all stakeholders.

Blockchain Tethered Architectural (BTA) Framework

This is a proposed architecture with four core components to tether AI systems to blockchain networks:

1. Provenance anchors: Key stages of an AI lifecycle are recorded on blockchain to anchor pedigree. This includes data sources, model lineages, evaluation results, and deployment metadata. Anchors certify provenance for downstream consumers.
2. Governance modules: Smart contracts encode governance rules that control AI behavior, such as allowed data usages, fairness constraints, business KPIs, etc. Rules are administered on-chain through decentralized stakeholder voting.
3. Runtime monitors: Telemetry data is continuously collected as AIs operate in production. Metrics are compared against governance rules to detect violations. Alerts trigger contingency actions.
4. Reversal mechanisms: If AI systems violate governance, prior actions can be reversed. Reversibility might entail rolling back software changes, refunding improper transactions, or even destroying bad AI assets.

These properties allow AI systems to be deployed in sensitive applications ranging from finance to healthcare while engendering public trust. Organizations can develop marketplaces to share verifiable and well-governed AI assets.

Conclusion

Blockchain's unique capabilities offer a novel solution for instilling responsibility and oversight into AI systems. Recording critical AI provenance on blockchain ledgers, encoding governance rules with smart contracts, monitoring operations, and enabling reversibility helps ensure AI remains aligned with human values. Tethering AI to blockchain networks will enable trustworthy and responsible AI innovation. It's our kill switch to put humans in the loop. Without these guardrails in place, the risks associated with AI deployment in critical systems could outweigh the benefits.