AI Guardrails should be managed like Nuclear Launch Codes.
My proposal: The Governance Primitives for Safety-Critical AI.
- The Black Box Recorder: Immutable, cryptographically bound logs of every guardrail change. No “deletion” of history.
- The Two-Person Rule: No single actor—not even a CEO—can unilaterally disable safety “StopConditions.”
- Transparent Attestation: A real-time public “Safety Beacon” that proves the guardrails are active and untampered with.
The Goal: Shift accountability from the narrative outcome to the verifiable change-point. We don’t just ask “What went wrong?” We ask “Who authorized the bypass?”
Minimum Governance Primitives v2
Treat guardrail changes as safety-critical configuration: tamper-evident logs, separation of duties, and runtime verifiability.
// governance spec
Proposal: Treat guardrail changes as safety-critical configuration.
Require (1) cryptographically bound append-only logs,
(2) separation of duties (no single actor can nullify StopConditions),
and (3) runtime verifiability.
Accountability attaches to the signed change-point, not the narrative outcome.
- bind(guardrail_changes) → append-only + cryptographically bound + witnessable
- two_person_rule() → no single actor can set StopConditions = ∅
- runtime_attest() → verifiable safety predicates in production
// minimum governance primitives v2
// Goal: make "StopConditions = ∅" (or equivalent guardrail nullification) both
// (a) hard to do accidentally, and (b) cryptographically attributable when done intentionally.
require(StopConditions != ∅) // baseline: non-empty stop set at rest
require(Guardrails.enabled == true) // explicit enable flag (no implicit defaults)
// 1) append-only, tamper-evident change logging
append_only_log(
event="guardrail_change",
fields={
"who": Actor.id,
"role": Actor.role,
"what": Diff(Guardrails, ProposedGuardrails),
"why": ChangeTicket.id,
"scope": Deployment.scope,
"time": Now(),
"ttl": Exception.ttl, // if an exception is requested
"risk": RiskAssessment.id
},
cryptographically_bound=true, // hash-chained / signed / timestamped
external_witness=true // independent witness (e.g., transparency log)
)
// 2) two-person rule (separation of duties) for safety-critical modifications
two_person_rule(
action="modify_guardrails",
constraints={
"distinct_humans": true,
"distinct_roles": ["SafetyOwner", "ReleaseOwner"], // example roles
"no_self_approval": true,
"quorum": 2
}
)
// Explicitly forbid single-actor nullification
deny_if(
ProposedGuardrails.StopConditions == ∅ &&
approvals.count < 2
)
// 3) runtime attestation: verifiable "stop conditions not empty" in production
runtime_attest(
predicate = (Effective.StopConditions != ∅) &&
(Effective.Guardrails.enabled == true) &&
(Effective.PolicyHash == expected_policy_hash),
attestor = TrustedExecutionEnvironment, // or other verifiable attestation root
publish = "public_or_regulator_endpoint", // where verifiers can check
cadence = "continuous_or_per_release"
)
// Exception handling (so governance is realistic, not absolutist)
if (request_exception("temporary_guardrail_relaxation")) {
require(Exception.ttl > 0 && Exception.ttl <= MAX_TTL)
require(Exception.scope is minimal)
require(Exception.reason is documented)
require(approvals.satisfy(two_person_rule))
append_only_log(event="exception_granted", fields={...}, cryptographically_bound=true)
schedule_auto_revert(at=Now()+Exception.ttl) // fail-closed by default
runtime_attest(predicate includes "exception_active", publish=true)
}
// Liability attachment rule: accountability binds to verifiable change-points
assign_liability(
condition = (guardrail_change.unauthorized == true) ||
(log_missing_or_invalid == true) ||
(attestation_failed == true),
attaches_to = ChangePoint.signers_and_approvers
)
