The five objects of governance
Five nested objects: models inside systems inside agents, with data beside them, all inside the organisation, each with the controls that govern it.
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Five nested objects, each needing different controls. Models: the trained artefacts (foundation models, fine-tunes, classifiers), governed with model cards, evals and AIBOM. Systems: the application around the model (prompts, retrieval, tools, orchestration, the human and machine users); most risk is here, not in the raw model. Agents: systems that act, governed with identity, bounded scope, tool mediation, runtime guardrails and kill switches; the hardest and newest object. Data: training data, retrieval corpora, prompts and outputs, governed with data cards, DPIAs and lineage. The organisation: the roles, decision rights, escalation paths and accountability around all of the above, governed with an operating model, RACI and an incident pipeline. The discipline is coherent only when it addresses all five.
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<a href="https://aigovernanceengineer.com/figures/five-objects">The five objects of governance</a> by Jorge García Aibar,
aigovernanceengineer.com, v0.5.0.
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*[The five objects of governance](https://aigovernanceengineer.com/figures/five-objects) by Jorge García Aibar, aigovernanceengineer.com, v0.5.0. Licensed under [CC BY 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).*