Trust Is the Real Currency of AI

As Artificial Intelligence is firmly entrenched at many of the big tech companies, the huge computing power and massive amounts of data needed to create new A.I. models are growing increasingly concentrated among a few large players. This article contends that trust — not accuracy or automation — is the actual currency of AI. We consider how various explainability, transparency and alignment paradigms can be instantiated as quantifiable trust metrics, and suggest a ‘Trust Ledger’ architecture in which all actions (or decisions) performed by model are backed up with a perceived transaction history. The work stresses the increasing importance of alignment-based approaches to AI trustworthiness in all industries, integrating ethical design, behavioral assurance and compliance alignment.