BERLIN - As has been well-documented, artificial intelligence (AI) technology delivers significant societal and economic benefits, continuously generating positive change in various fields such as science, medicine, urban management, and energy. The risks that AI systems pose must be addressed, however, and this is becoming more urgent. This is why international organizations, governments, and companies have started to develop various regulations, standards, rules, ethical principles, and norms that govern and control the development of these systems. 

Although some regulations and rules are already in place, no consistent process or mechanism yet exists to check whether AI systems actually follow and comply with these rules across the board. As an important part of AI governance, AI assurance can potentially bridge this gap and make the development process more trustworthy, credible, and effective than it has been so far. AI assurance services serve as important tools for gaining users’ trust, which is the paramount indicator of any AI’s successful development and deployment. To make this whole process of AI development and deployment trustworthy, an effective ecosystem must be created - this then enables providing stakeholders with professional evidence about the correct and proper functionality of the AI system in question. Healthy assurance ecosystems already exist in other industries, and it is common practice to support businesses through accounting and auditing. Given the rapid pace and rate of growth of the AI industry, an effective and coherent assurance ecosystem is thus essential to ensure the positive implementation of AI and other new tech.