Decision Rights and Evidence: Who Decides, and How We Know

All courses / Landscape / Module 3 / Chapter 17

Learning objectives

After the lesson the participant can:

• Read a row of a decision-rights view: ceiling, action classes, policy point, seat and shaded cells.
• Test a named holder against the six capabilities before a seat is drawn.
• Distinguish verified, declared and failed controls, and filled from hatched cells in an evidence view.
• Review one unit in six steps and write the decision record and its evidence row.

Key concepts

Decision right

The authority to say what an AI use may do, to change that, and to stop it. A decision right without evidence is a hope; evidence without a decision right is a report nobody has to act on.

Ceiling and action classes

The thick bar in V4 is the unit's ceiling: the highest autonomy level at which it may act for any action that changes something. Each thin bar is one action class with its own level. The seat sits at the end of the bar.

Stop path

The named people who may stop the unit, the mechanism they use and the time it takes. Contour gives it no glyph: the decision record names it, the drill measures it, and the evidence view shows it as a test result.

Evidence and attestation in V5

A filled cell is automatic evidence: a log, a test, a gate. A hatched cell is attested: a questionnaire answer, a contract clause, a signature. A hatched cell alone on a unit at R3 Hard to reverse is the question to ask.

Verified, declared, failed

A control is verified when a test that re-runs its scenario has passed recently and produced evidence by operation, declared when somebody says so, and failed when the test ran and did not pass. The evidence manifest behind each cell holds the result.

Interactive exercises

Do them here and get feedback at once. Choose a card and then where it belongs, or drag it.

Teaching plan

Discussion

1. The chapter says a seat for someone who could not in practice stop the unit is worse than none. What does the board believe when it sees such a seat, and how would the six questions have prevented it?
2. Contour refuses to draw the stop path as a symbol because a symbol would say there is a kill switch with nothing behind it. What does your organisation currently accept as proof that a unit can be stopped?
3. Hansa Mutual's leverage is its platform and Nordvik Region's is the contract. Which describes your organisation, and what does that imply for turning hatched cells into filled ones?

Written exercise

Self-test

Choose an answer to see whether it is right, or open the answer below each question.

1. Between 1 January and 31 December 2027, Hansa Mutual's ambient AI row gains a seat reading 2 while its bar stays at Level 4 Autonomous. Why is the bar unchanged?

   1. Because the executive board decided, on 31 March, to keep the vendors' features at Level 4
   2. Because a policy point now enforces the Level 4 ceiling
   3. Because the group cannot change what a vendor's product does; it can only add a seat
   4. Because the renderer draws Mode 0 units at Level 4 whatever the model says
   Show the answer

   C. Because the group cannot change what a vendor's product does; it can only add a seat
   The vendors set the level. The head of the group AI platform, as owner of the AI inventory, takes the right to say which supplier-enabled features the group relies on and writes notice clauses. The bar is unchanged and the row still has no diamond.

2. Why is Nordvik Region's supplier evidence schedule for the benefits-triage system drawn as a hatched cell in V5?

   1. Because it is a dated set of declarations about the supplier's side: the supplier's word, next to the Region's own logs
   2. Because the stop drill behind it failed its budget when re-run
   3. Because the benefits-triage system produces no logs of its own
   4. Because the schedule has not yet entered into force
   Show the answer

   A. Because it is a dated set of declarations about the supplier's side: the supplier's word, next to the Region's own logs
   The Region has always had its own logs, gates and tests for the system. The schedule adds dated declarations from the supplier, such as the notice period before a model change. It is drawn hatched because that is what it is. A hatched cell beside filled cells is honest.

3. In the review of one unit, what follows from a no to any of the six capabilities of the named holder?

   1. The seat is drawn with a red outline
   2. The seat is drawn one tier higher than the holder's role
   3. The unit must be retired before the next quarter
   4. The seat is not drawn until every answer is yes
   Show the answer

   D. The seat is not drawn until every answer is yes
   A name is necessary and not sufficient. The review asks the six questions before the seat is drawn; a no to any of them means the seat is not drawn yet, because a seat without the means tells the board the question is answered.