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A Practical Multilevel Governance Framework for Autonomous and Intelligent Systems

Lukas D. Pöhler, Klaus Diepold, Wendell Wallach

TL;DR

The paper tackles the pacing gap in AIS governance by proposing a practical multilevel framework that maps actors and tools across six decision-making levels, from individuals and teams to international bodies. It combines hard and soft law instruments with agile governance concepts, including regulatory sandboxes and iterative policy cycles, and integrates risk review via the Tucker framework for continuous oversight. A core contribution is detailing mechanisms that link levels, enabling bidirectional information flow and formal oversight while preserving innovation. The framework is demonstrated through an application to AIS development, illustrating actor roles, tools, and governance flows across organizational, industry, national, and international domains, with good practices to support adaptive governance.

Abstract

Autonomous and intelligent systems (AIS) facilitate a wide range of beneficial applications across a variety of different domains. However, technical characteristics such as unpredictability and lack of transparency, as well as potential unintended consequences, pose considerable challenges to the current governance infrastructure. Furthermore, the speed of development and deployment of applications outpaces the ability of existing governance institutions to put in place effective ethical-legal oversight. New approaches for agile, distributed and multilevel governance are needed. This work presents a practical framework for multilevel governance of AIS. The framework enables mapping actors onto six levels of decision-making including the international, national and organizational levels. Furthermore, it offers the ability to identify and evolve existing tools or create new tools for guiding the behavior of actors within the levels. Governance mechanisms enable actors to shape and enforce regulations and other tools, which when complemented with good practices contribute to effective and comprehensive governance.

A Practical Multilevel Governance Framework for Autonomous and Intelligent Systems

TL;DR

The paper tackles the pacing gap in AIS governance by proposing a practical multilevel framework that maps actors and tools across six decision-making levels, from individuals and teams to international bodies. It combines hard and soft law instruments with agile governance concepts, including regulatory sandboxes and iterative policy cycles, and integrates risk review via the Tucker framework for continuous oversight. A core contribution is detailing mechanisms that link levels, enabling bidirectional information flow and formal oversight while preserving innovation. The framework is demonstrated through an application to AIS development, illustrating actor roles, tools, and governance flows across organizational, industry, national, and international domains, with good practices to support adaptive governance.

Abstract

Autonomous and intelligent systems (AIS) facilitate a wide range of beneficial applications across a variety of different domains. However, technical characteristics such as unpredictability and lack of transparency, as well as potential unintended consequences, pose considerable challenges to the current governance infrastructure. Furthermore, the speed of development and deployment of applications outpaces the ability of existing governance institutions to put in place effective ethical-legal oversight. New approaches for agile, distributed and multilevel governance are needed. This work presents a practical framework for multilevel governance of AIS. The framework enables mapping actors onto six levels of decision-making including the international, national and organizational levels. Furthermore, it offers the ability to identify and evolve existing tools or create new tools for guiding the behavior of actors within the levels. Governance mechanisms enable actors to shape and enforce regulations and other tools, which when complemented with good practices contribute to effective and comprehensive governance.
Paper Structure (27 sections, 2 figures)

This paper contains 27 sections, 2 figures.

Table of Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. AIS bring Chances and Challenges
  3. The Changing Governance Landscape
  4. The Need for a Multilevel Governance Framework
  5. Comprehensive Governance of Emerging Technologies
  6. Adaptive Governance beyond Governments
  7. Agile Governance
  8. Additional Components for Comprehensive Governance
  9. Soft Law Governance Tools
  10. Risk Review of Technology
  11. Process Governance and Oversight
  12. A Practical Multilevel Governance Framework for AIS
  13. Levels for Decision-Making
  14. Tools for Guidance
  15. Mechanisms for Governance and Oversight
  16. ...and 12 more sections

Figures (2)

  • Figure 1: Schematics of the multilevel governance framework for AIS with levels, actors, tools and mechanisms for governance and oversight.
  • Figure 2: Application of the multilevel governance framework for the development of AIS with levels, actors, tools and mechanisms for governance and oversight with a focus on industries, companies and developers.