AI Computed Provenance Community Group

The mission of this group is to build an open trust layer for AI-driven science and technology, stewarded as a public good. The current paradigm of AI-assisted research often requires users to place blind faith in proprietary black boxes. This group standardizes a paradigm shift: a machine-checked and cryptographically founded foundation that records exactly how every fact is known.

By capturing this provenance, auditing any conclusion transforms from an act of trust into a transparent, independently reproducible process. The group operates on the core distinction that "Computed ≠ Asserted"—a system must prove it computed a result, rather than simply asserting it. Because you cannot outsource "is this true?" to a proprietary black box and have the answer carry independent weight, this verification layer must remain fundamentally neutral and immune to single-vendor enclosure.

This group expects to deliver:

A reference specification for capturing cryptographic provenance in AI-assisted scientific and technical workflows.
An initial conformance test suite for independent verification.
Architectural guidelines ensuring the protocol remains inspectable and protected from commercial capture.

Group's public email, repo and wiki activity over time

Note: Community Groups are proposed and run by the community. Although W3C hosts these conversations, the groups do not necessarily represent the views of the W3C Membership or staff.

Call for Participation in AI Computed Provenance Community Group

sysbotcg | Posted on: August 14, 2026

The AI Computed Provenance Community Group has been launched:

By capturing this provenance, auditing any conclusion transforms from an act of trust into a transparent, independently reproducible process. The group operates on the core distinction that “Computed ≠ Asserted”—a system must prove it computed a result, rather than simply asserting it. Because you cannot outsource “is this true?” to a proprietary black box and have the answer carry independent weight, this verification layer must remain fundamentally neutral and immune to single-vendor enclosure.

This group expects to deliver:

A reference specification for capturing cryptographic provenance in AI-assisted scientific and technical workflows.
An initial conformance test suite for independent verification.
Architectural guidelines ensuring the protocol remains inspectable and protected from commercial capture.

In order to join the group, you will need a W3C account. Please note, however, that W3C Membership is not required to join a Community Group.

This is a community initiative. This group was originally proposed on 2026-08-11 by Hans-Martin Will. The following people supported its creation: Hans-Martin Will, dominic suciu, Christian Perez, Lily Yee and Andrew Kasarskis. W3C’s hosting of this group does not imply endorsement of the activities.

The group must now choose a chair. Read more about how to get started in a new group and good practice for running a group.

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If you believe that there is an issue with this group that requires the attention of the W3C staff, please email us at site-comments@w3.org

Thank you,
W3C Community Development Team

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AI Computed Provenance Community Group

Call for Participation in AI Computed Provenance Community Group

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