ISO 55001 and the AI agent: who signs before the auditor? From Yokkaichi to the audit room: what the standard already allows you to demand of an AI agent on a critical asset

Since 2022, artificial intelligence agents have been operating valves, writing work orders and preparing maintenance decisions on industrial assets, sometimes without prior human validation. This study rereads the 2024 edition of ISO 55001 with a single question in mind: when an agent prepared or made the decision, what do you show the auditor? It examines nine real cases documented by open sources, from Japan to Saudi Arabia and from California to Morocco, and finds that none of them says who answers for a decision made by the machine, that only one describes the trace of its decisions, and that seven rely on the technology of an identified supplier, outside the operator in at least six cases. It shows that the protocol, the identities and the rules governing these agents are being written beyond the reach of the asset owner, and then that the standard already contains, clause by clause, what is needed to demand five items of any agent touching an asset: a named person responsible, a declared scope of autonomy, the trace of every decision, the data and its source, and the contract with the supplier. An agent that cannot be audited is not progress in asset management: it is one requirement of the standard less.

English version, translated by the author, of Cahiers de technopolitique no. 7 (French original: 10.5281/zenodo.23207211). Full text in open access: https://technopolitique.eu/cahiers/n7/en/. Nine documented cases (Yokkaichi, Poughkeepsie, Fadhili, California, Denver, Osaka, North Sea, Norway, Morocco) and one non-AI counterpoint (Pilbara). Thirty sources, all open, consulted between 2 and 6 October 2026.