Swiss Cheese Model for AI Safety: A Taxonomy and Reference Architecture for Multi-Layered Guardrails of Foundation Model Based Agents

Fuente: arXiv
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Auteurs principaux: Shamsujjoha, Md, Lu, Qinghua, Zhao, Dehai, Zhu, Liming
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2024
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author Shamsujjoha, Md
Lu, Qinghua
Zhao, Dehai
Zhu, Liming
author_facet Shamsujjoha, Md
Lu, Qinghua
Zhao, Dehai
Zhu, Liming
contents Foundation Model (FM)-based agents are revolutionizing application development across various domains. However, their rapidly growing capabilities and autonomy have raised significant concerns about AI safety. Researchers are exploring better ways to design guardrails to ensure that the runtime behavior of FM-based agents remains within specific boundaries. Nevertheless, designing effective runtime guardrails is challenging due to the agents' autonomous and non-deterministic behavior. The involvement of multiple pipeline stages and agent artifacts, such as goals, plans, tools, at runtime further complicates these issues. Addressing these challenges at runtime requires multi-layered guardrails that operate effectively at various levels of the agent architecture. Therefore, in this paper, based on the results of a systematic literature review, we present a comprehensive taxonomy of runtime guardrails for FM-based agents to identify the key quality attributes for guardrails and design dimensions. Inspired by the Swiss Cheese Model, we also propose a reference architecture for designing multi-layered runtime guardrails for FM-based agents, which includes three dimensions: quality attributes, pipelines, and artifacts. The proposed taxonomy and reference architecture provide concrete and robust guidance for researchers and practitioners to build AI-safety-by-design from a software architecture perspective.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2408_02205
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Swiss Cheese Model for AI Safety: A Taxonomy and Reference Architecture for Multi-Layered Guardrails of Foundation Model Based Agents
Shamsujjoha, Md
Lu, Qinghua
Zhao, Dehai
Zhu, Liming
Software Engineering
Artificial Intelligence
Foundation Model (FM)-based agents are revolutionizing application development across various domains. However, their rapidly growing capabilities and autonomy have raised significant concerns about AI safety. Researchers are exploring better ways to design guardrails to ensure that the runtime behavior of FM-based agents remains within specific boundaries. Nevertheless, designing effective runtime guardrails is challenging due to the agents' autonomous and non-deterministic behavior. The involvement of multiple pipeline stages and agent artifacts, such as goals, plans, tools, at runtime further complicates these issues. Addressing these challenges at runtime requires multi-layered guardrails that operate effectively at various levels of the agent architecture. Therefore, in this paper, based on the results of a systematic literature review, we present a comprehensive taxonomy of runtime guardrails for FM-based agents to identify the key quality attributes for guardrails and design dimensions. Inspired by the Swiss Cheese Model, we also propose a reference architecture for designing multi-layered runtime guardrails for FM-based agents, which includes three dimensions: quality attributes, pipelines, and artifacts. The proposed taxonomy and reference architecture provide concrete and robust guidance for researchers and practitioners to build AI-safety-by-design from a software architecture perspective.
title Swiss Cheese Model for AI Safety: A Taxonomy and Reference Architecture for Multi-Layered Guardrails of Foundation Model Based Agents
topic Software Engineering
Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2408.02205