National foreword

This British Standard is the UK implementation of ISO/IEC 5339:2024.

The UK participation in its preparation was entrusted to Technical Committee ART/1, Artificial Intelligence.

A list of organizations represented on this committee can be obtained on request to its committee manager.

Contractual and legal considerations

This publication has been prepared in good faith, however no representation, warranty, assurance or undertaking (express or implied) is or will be made, and no responsibility or liability is or will be accepted by BSI in relation to the adequacy, accuracy, completeness or reasonableness of this publication. All and any such responsibility and liability is expressly disclaimed to the full extent permitted by the law.

This publication is provided as is, and is to be used at the recipient’s own risk.

The recipient is advised to consider seeking professional guidance with respect to its use of this publication.

This publication is not intended to constitute a contract. Users are responsible for its correct application.

Compliance with a British Standard cannot confer immunity from legal obligations.

This British Standard was published under the authority of the Standards Policy and Strategy Committee on 31 January 2024.

Foreword

ISO (the International Organization for Standardization) and IEC (the International Electrotechnical Commission) form the specialized system for worldwide standardization. National bodies that are members of ISO or IEC participate in the development of International Standards through technical committees established by the respective organization to deal with particular fields of technical activity. ISO and IEC technical committees collaborate in fields of mutual interest. Other international organizations, governmental and non-governmental, in liaison with ISO and IEC, also take part in the work.

The procedures used to develop this document and those intended for its further maintenance are described in the ISO/IEC Directives, Part 1. In particular, the different approval criteria needed for the different types of document should be noted. This document was drafted in accordance with the editorial rules of the ISO/IEC Directives, Part 2 (see www.iso.org/directives or www.iec.ch/members_experts/refdocs).

ISO and IEC draw attention to the possibility that the implementation of this document may involve the use of (a) patent(s). ISO and IEC take no position concerning the evidence, validity or applicability of any claimed patent rights in respect thereof. As of the date of publication of this document, ISO and IEC had not received notice of (a) patent(s) which may be required to implement this document. However, implementers are cautioned that this may not represent the latest information, which may be obtained from the patent database available at www.iso.org/patents and https://patents.iec.ch. ISO and IEC shall not be held responsible for identifying any or all such patent rights.

Any trade name used in this document is information given for the convenience of users and does not constitute an endorsement.

For an explanation of the voluntary nature of standards, the meaning of ISO specific terms and expressions related to conformity assessment, as well as information about ISO's adherence to the World Trade Organization (WTO) principles in the Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT) see www.iso.org/iso/foreword.html. In the IEC, see www.iec.ch/understanding-standards.

This document was prepared by Joint Technical Committee ISO/IEC JTC 1, Information technology, Subcommittee SC 42, Artificial intelligence.

Any feedback or questions on this document should be directed to the user’s national standards body. A complete listing of these bodies can be found at www.iso.org/members.html and www.iec.ch/national-committees.

Introduction

Artificial intelligence (AI) systems have the potential to create incremental changes and achieve new levels of performance and capability in domains such as agriculture, transportation, fintech, education, energy, healthcare and manufacturing. However, the potential risks related to lack of trustworthiness can impact AI implementations and their acceptance. AI applications can involve and impact many stakeholders, including individuals, organizations and society as a whole. The impact of AI applications can evolve over time, in some cases due to the nature of the underlying data or legal environment. The stakeholders should be made aware of their roles and responsibilities in their engagement. While detailed AI-related standards can serve the interest of technical experts involved in engineering and development, this document provides a macro-level context of the AI application life cycle, to facilitate multi-stakeholder communication, engagement and acceptance.

This document contains guidance for AI applications based on a common framework, to provide multiple macro-level perspectives. The framework incorporates “make”, “use” and “impact” perspectives. It also incorporates AI characteristics and non-functional characteristics such as trustworthiness and risk management. The guidance can be used by standards developers, application developers and other interested parties to provide answers to the question: “What are the characteristics and considerations of an AI application?”. The stakeholders are mapped to various stages of the AI system life cycle, highlighting their roles and responsibilities and making them aware of the processes to follow to enable a coherent stakeholder engagement for the AI application. These stakeholders can have various levels of AI expertise and knowledge. Since AI applications can differ from non-AI software applications due to their continuously evolving nature and aspects of trustworthiness, all stakeholders should be made aware of AI-specific characteristics.

This document provides:

this document’s motivation and objectives (Clause 4);
an approach to identifying an AI application’s stakeholders, context, functional characteristics and non-functional characteristics (Clause 5);
an AI application framework that can be used to answer the question: “What are the characteristics and considerations of an AI application?” (Clause 6);
guidance for AI applications based on the make, use and impact perspectives (Clause 7).

1 Scope

This document provides guidance for identifying the context, opportunities and processes for developing and applying AI applications. The guidance provides a macro-level view of the AI application context, the stakeholders and their roles, relationship to the life cycle of the system, and common AI application characteristics and considerations.

2 Normative references

3 Terms and definitions

4 Motivations and objectives

5 AI application context and characteristics

5.1 Establishing approach for AI application context

5.2 AI application context

5.3 Stakeholders and processes

5.4 AI application functional characteristics

5.5 AI application non-functional characteristics and considerations

6 Stakeholders’ perspectives and AI application framework

6.1 General

6.2 Stakeholders’ perspectives

6.3 AI application framework

7 Guidance for AI applications

7.1 General

7.2 Use perspective

7.3 Impact perspective

Bibliography

BS ISO/IEC 5339:2024

Information technology. Artificial intelligence. Guidance for AI applications

Current

Published:

31 Jan 2024