Four questions for an AI system.
Alignment, control, containment and assurance describe different parts of the problem. Use the distinctions to locate a claim and examine its limits.
Alignment
What should the system do?
Define the intended outcome and the measure of success. A faster process and a better outcome are separate claims.
An objective does not establish that the system will pursue it reliably.
Control
Who can authorize an action?
Connect permission, resource limits and human intervention to the point where work is executed.
A policy decision cannot stop an action unless the executor applies it.
Containment
Where can the system act?
Bound access to data, tools and infrastructure. Identify what remains under your custody when a provider or system changes.
Access to model weights does not determine where requests or records are held.
Assurance
What supports the claim?
Examine the evidence, assessment scope and version behind a claim about a system. Keep the limits attached to the finding.
A published assessment is not a certificate that the system is safe.
This is a navigation framework for the reference, not a claim that these four domains form a universal or mutually exclusive taxonomy. A control can serve more than one purpose.
The control vs. alignment
taxonomy reference.
Four questions for your next system review.
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