Black-Box Access is Insufficient for Rigorous AI Audits
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| Main Authors: | , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , |
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| Format: | Preprint |
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2024
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| _version_ | 1866911910352388096 |
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| author | Casper, Stephen Ezell, Carson Siegmann, Charlotte Kolt, Noam Curtis, Taylor Lynn Bucknall, Benjamin Haupt, Andreas Wei, Kevin Scheurer, Jérémy Hobbhahn, Marius Sharkey, Lee Krishna, Satyapriya Von Hagen, Marvin Alberti, Silas Chan, Alan Sun, Qinyi Gerovitch, Michael Bau, David Tegmark, Max Krueger, David Hadfield-Menell, Dylan |
| author_facet | Casper, Stephen Ezell, Carson Siegmann, Charlotte Kolt, Noam Curtis, Taylor Lynn Bucknall, Benjamin Haupt, Andreas Wei, Kevin Scheurer, Jérémy Hobbhahn, Marius Sharkey, Lee Krishna, Satyapriya Von Hagen, Marvin Alberti, Silas Chan, Alan Sun, Qinyi Gerovitch, Michael Bau, David Tegmark, Max Krueger, David Hadfield-Menell, Dylan |
| contents | External audits of AI systems are increasingly recognized as a key mechanism for AI governance. The effectiveness of an audit, however, depends on the degree of access granted to auditors. Recent audits of state-of-the-art AI systems have primarily relied on black-box access, in which auditors can only query the system and observe its outputs. However, white-box access to the system's inner workings (e.g., weights, activations, gradients) allows an auditor to perform stronger attacks, more thoroughly interpret models, and conduct fine-tuning. Meanwhile, outside-the-box access to training and deployment information (e.g., methodology, code, documentation, data, deployment details, findings from internal evaluations) allows auditors to scrutinize the development process and design more targeted evaluations. In this paper, we examine the limitations of black-box audits and the advantages of white- and outside-the-box audits. We also discuss technical, physical, and legal safeguards for performing these audits with minimal security risks. Given that different forms of access can lead to very different levels of evaluation, we conclude that (1) transparency regarding the access and methods used by auditors is necessary to properly interpret audit results, and (2) white- and outside-the-box access allow for substantially more scrutiny than black-box access alone. |
| format | Preprint |
| id |
arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2401_14446 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2024 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | Black-Box Access is Insufficient for Rigorous AI Audits Casper, Stephen Ezell, Carson Siegmann, Charlotte Kolt, Noam Curtis, Taylor Lynn Bucknall, Benjamin Haupt, Andreas Wei, Kevin Scheurer, Jérémy Hobbhahn, Marius Sharkey, Lee Krishna, Satyapriya Von Hagen, Marvin Alberti, Silas Chan, Alan Sun, Qinyi Gerovitch, Michael Bau, David Tegmark, Max Krueger, David Hadfield-Menell, Dylan Computers and Society Artificial Intelligence Cryptography and Security External audits of AI systems are increasingly recognized as a key mechanism for AI governance. The effectiveness of an audit, however, depends on the degree of access granted to auditors. Recent audits of state-of-the-art AI systems have primarily relied on black-box access, in which auditors can only query the system and observe its outputs. However, white-box access to the system's inner workings (e.g., weights, activations, gradients) allows an auditor to perform stronger attacks, more thoroughly interpret models, and conduct fine-tuning. Meanwhile, outside-the-box access to training and deployment information (e.g., methodology, code, documentation, data, deployment details, findings from internal evaluations) allows auditors to scrutinize the development process and design more targeted evaluations. In this paper, we examine the limitations of black-box audits and the advantages of white- and outside-the-box audits. We also discuss technical, physical, and legal safeguards for performing these audits with minimal security risks. Given that different forms of access can lead to very different levels of evaluation, we conclude that (1) transparency regarding the access and methods used by auditors is necessary to properly interpret audit results, and (2) white- and outside-the-box access allow for substantially more scrutiny than black-box access alone. |
| title | Black-Box Access is Insufficient for Rigorous AI Audits |
| topic | Computers and Society Artificial Intelligence Cryptography and Security |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2401.14446 |