arXiv AI

Builder, Defender, Breaker: Measurable Independence and Bounded Autonomy When Generative Models Build, Defend and Test Software

The article discusses how generative models increasingly act as builders, defenders, and breakers of software, challenging the assumption that full autonomy is the ultimate goal. It introduces a framework that defines measurable independence between lifecycle roles based on shared generative substrates, and proposes five autonomy levels, three human roles, and five decision criteria to guide oversight. The authors argue that human authority should focus on specification, accountability, and emergency intervention, and they outline testable hypotheses and protocols to evaluate independence and oversight effectiveness.

arXiv Machine Learning
Oct 8

Restricting the Model, Missing the System: Measurement and Accountability in Offensive AI Governance

arXiv:2605.09504v3 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: We show that the instruments used to measure AI offensive capability fail in two ways: (i) they overstate harm, and (ii) they credit the mode...

By Michael Alexander Riegler, Finn Schwall, Annika Willoch Olstad, Birk Sebastian Frostelid Torpmann-Hagen, Sushant Gautam, Klas H. Pettersen, Inga Str\"umke
arXiv AI
Oct 31

Agentic process evidence

The article discusses how AI agents are transforming software development by autonomously creating pull requests, selecting dependencies, refactoring code, interpreting test failures, and managing infrastructure across the SDLC. It highlights the lack of accountability for these transient processes, noting that traditional tools like git logs and governance frameworks assume human decision‑making, which no longer applies. To address this, the authors propose Agentic Process Evidence (APE), a signed, tamper‑evident, machine‑readable attestation that links AI agent sessions to their outcomes, enabling policy‑as‑code controls and human oversight only when necessary.

By Yuval Kainan, Carmit Hershman
arXiv AI
Aug 28

Agent Mesh: Reliability Primitives for Non-Idempotent Agent Delegation - Identity Adequacy and Evidence Adequacy

The paper reports a failure study of a production agentic software‑delivery platform, analyzing 147 incidents across 81 runs. It shows that the standard reliability primitives—retry, timeout, and error‑rate circuit breaking—fail in practice, leading to costly loops, false trips, and blocked work. The authors identify two cross‑cutting causes—identity adequacy and evidence adequacy—and propose seven new reliability primitives that enforce reliability at the delegation level.

By Mazhar Shaikh, Anurag Rajkumar Bombarde, Harshal Pathak
arXiv AI
Aug 28

Five Primitives for Governing Autonomous AI Agents at Runtime

The paper proposes five runtime primitives—discovery, identity, governance, attestation, and supply chain—to manage autonomous AI agents in enterprise settings. It argues that traditional control models fail because agents are transient, model-driven, and self‑discoverable, making runtime governance essential. The authors detail an implementation that mediates agent actions against policy, authorizes them via a per‑tenant vocabulary, and records them in a verifiable ledger, noting the associated operational costs and partial deployment status.

By Jiten Oswal, John Cadeddu
Hugging Face Trending Papers
Oct 29

Agentic process evidence

The article discusses how AI agents are transforming software development by autonomously handling tasks across the SDLC, yet their actions are fleeting and lack traceability. It highlights the emerging security risks—intent mismatch, injection, and supply‑chain vulnerabilities—and the absence of standards for agentic provenance and governance. To address this, the authors propose Agentic Process Evidence (APE), a signed, tamper‑evident, machine‑readable attestation that links AI agent sessions to outcomes, enabling policy‑as‑code control and human oversight only when necessary.

arXiv AI
Sep 11

Introducing Consort: A Spec-First Agent Framework for Enforced, Test-Driven Development on Live Database Branches

Consort is a spec‑first, test‑driven agent framework that enforces engineering discipline through immutable controls, a deterministic orchestrator, and human‑approved gates. It operates on live database branches, guiding role agents through a spec‑first design lane and a test‑driven build lane. The framework claims that enforcing tests and gates in code keeps agent‑written code honest and verifiable, while specialized roles make it maintainable.

By Kevin Hartman
arXiv AI
Oct 27

Responsibility Boundaries for Agentic Systems: A Comparative Evaluation of Probabilistic Agentic Programming

The paper introduces Probabilistic Agentic Programming (PAP), a framework that explicitly defines responsibility boundaries for language‑model agents by linking mandate, authority, effects, and evidence. It compares PAP to various programming paradigms and agent systems across seven dimensions, and presents a mediation kernel that enforces checks before tool execution, operation‑bound approval, and resource limits. An exploratory study with seven business cases and multiple models demonstrates that PAP’s native Touba implementation achieves the highest or tied observation counts, supporting its effectiveness in managing agentic behavior.

By Khadim Lo, Soukaina Alaoui Ismaili, Jean-S\'{e}bastien Dessureault
arXiv AI
Sep 25

The Gold in Bias: Maturing the AI Design Process through Verification

The paper proposes rethinking bias in AI as a diagnostic tool rather than merely a flaw to be minimized. It introduces a multidimensional framework that examines bias across origin, lifecycle emergence, technical causes, and validation methods, covering 30 bias types, 16 verification methods, and 20 countermeasures for both traditional and generative AI. The authors present a hierarchical evidence framework distinguishing internal and external validity, and advocate for Ethics by Design principles to embed bias verification throughout the AI development lifecycle.

By Samira Maghool, Paolo Ceravolo