AI-DAL: Towards Security Design Assurance for Artificial Intelligence Systems in Production

The rise of artificial intelligence applications in society, and their accompanying security concerns, has created a need for regulatory oversight that is auditable, actionable, and adaptable to a rapidly changing technological landscape. Methods from safety-critical software engineering, particularly aerospace, are adapted to use in production AIML to aid both practitioners and regulators in establishing design thresholds for AIML system security. Assignment of AI Design Assurance Levels (AI-DAL) to projects/components, along with production of related compliance artifacts, is proposed as a means of consistently applying appropriate design requirements based on a system’s potential adverse impact.