01
Agent
Attribution, not moral agency.
The agent must be identifiable in the action path. ARE makes the act traceable without pretending the model carries institutional responsibility.
Accountability
Responsibility does not disappear into the agent.
ARE separates attribution from accountability. The system must show which agent acted, but the organization remains responsible for the control structure that allowed the action to occur.
Responsibility Map
ARE makes the chain of control inspectable.
This is not legal advice and does not replace regulatory analysis. It is an engineering posture: accountability follows authority, delegation, control, and evidence.
02
System Owner
Control design.
The owner is responsible for the execution boundary, the policy checks, the denial path, and the evidence generated by consequential action.
03
Organization
Delegated authority.
The organization remains accountable for what it allowed the autonomous system to do, what scope it approved, and what proof it can produce.
Audit Question
A governed system can answer before the incident report.
If an autonomous system acts in a regulated or high-consequence environment, ARE expects the control plane to answer the basic accountability questions from its own evidence.
Which agent acted?
Who delegated authority to that agent?
What scope governed the action?
Which control allowed, constrained, or denied execution?
What evidence proves the decision path?