Auditability

Summary: The ability to inspect, verify, and understand the logic and data used by an automated system to reach its conclusions.

Sources: chapter12

Last updated: 2026-04-18


Auditability is a key requirement for system reliability and ethics, especially in regulated industries or when automated decisions affect people’s lives (source: chapter12).

Mechanisms

  • Immutable Logs: Storing a permanent, append-only record of all inputs and decisions (source: chapter11).
  • Explainability: Designing systems so their internal state and decision-making logic can be queried and understood by humans.
  • Reproducibility: The ability to re-run a process with the same inputs and verify that it produces the same outputs.