A description of Promise Theory, in an article published in the Linux Journal in 2014: "IT installations grow to massive size in data centers, and the idea of

A description of Promise Theory, in an article published in the Linux Journal in 2014: "IT installations grow to massive size in data centers, and the idea of remote command and control, by an external manager, struggles to keep pace, because it is an essentially manual human-centric activity. Thankfully, a simple way out of this dilemma was proposed in 2005 and has acquired a growing band of disciples in computing and networking. This involves the harnessing of autonomous distributed agents." (https://www.linuxjournal.com/content/promise-theory%E2%80%94what-it https://www.linuxjournal.com/content/promise-theory%E2%80%94...) What are autonomous agents in promise theory? "Agents in promise theory are said to be autonomous, meaning that they are causally independent of one another. This independence implies that they cannot be controlled from without, they originate their own behaviours entirely from within, yet they can rely on one another's services through the making of promises to signal cooperation." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Promise_theory#Agents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Promise_theory#Agents) Note: the wikipedia article is off because it is framing agents in terms of obligations instead of promises. Promises make no guarantee of behavior, and it is up each autonomous agent to decide how much it can rely on the promises of other autonomous agents. So to circle back to this original post with the lens of Promise Theory -- being held accountable comes from a theory of obligations rather than a theory of promises. (There is a promise made by the governing body to hold the bad actor responsible). More crucially, we are treating AIs as _proxies_ for autonomous agents -- humans. Human engineers and potentially, regulatory bodies, are promising certain performances in the AIs, but the AIs have exceeded the engineer's capability for bounding behaviors. To make that next leap, we would be basically having AIs make their own promises, and either holding them to them to it, or consider that that specific autonomous agent is not reliable in their promises.