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Attestable

When probabilistic AI feeds safety-critical systems, unproven output can drive physical action unchecked. Attestable is a discipline for marking a claim's basis, so it cannot.

OT SecurityCyber-Physical AssuranceIEC 62443ProvenanceSafety CaseLLM Agents

Readings: The Gap Spine

5 entries

Primary-source readings of provenance, policy, and attestation in their own specifications, and the mechanism argument. Feeds the review chapter's second section.

  1. Reading: Provenance (W3C PROV) The first of the near-neighbour readings. PROV records where information came from but adjudicates nothing; its own definition names trust assessment as provenance's purpose and then places that assessment outside itself, marking the exact edge of the gap.
  2. Reading: Policy Engines (OPA, Rego) The cleanest of the near-neighbour readings. A policy engine evaluates whatever rules and facts it is given and supplies neither; to make one refuse False Determinism you must first build the basis model, which is the contribution. OPA is where Attestable would run, not a rival to it.
  3. Reading: Attestation (in-toto, SLSA) The last near-neighbour reading, and the sharpest. Attestation frameworks certify who produced an artefact and that it was unaltered; they say nothing about whether it is true or fit to act on. Integrity is orthogonal to admissibility, and both specs state it against themselves.
  4. Reading: The Gap, Discharged Where the three readings come together. Provenance, attestation, and policy each stop exactly short of representing a claim's basis and adjudicating fitness for an action; even composed, they leave that model un-supplied. The gap the problem statement asserted is now the reading's conclusion.
  5. Reading: Why the Failure Is Structural The other half of the review. Four findings assemble to show False Determinism is not a passing quirk: generation produces basis-free assertion by design, confidence is the wrong category to fix it, the deficit is an absence rather than a concealment, and handover strips what little remains.