NEW YORK, Sept. 17, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) --
As bipartisan legislation demands verifiable agent controls, the Advanced AI Society releases the Proof-of-Control v1.0 draft for public comment and hosts "Who's Watching the Machines?" event with Linux Foundation Decentralized Trust
As bipartisan Congressional proposals demand continuous agent verification and third-party evaluation, and as frontier lab leaders call to pace AI capability growth, Advanced AI Society, the alliance making trust in AI possible, today announced its membership in the Linux Foundation and LF Decentralized Trust and the launch of an open verification ecosystem.
To answer growing statutory mandates and security requirements across enterprise and public systems, the alliance has released the v1.0 working draft of Proof-of-Control for public comment through October 30, 2026 at advancedaisociety.org/proof-of-control. Hosted by LF Decentralized Trust as a lab, this new standard builds directly on the production-proven Verifiable AI technologies of the alliance’s member companies. Co-designed alongside a coalition of over 80 global security leaders across enterprise sectors, it validates market demand for interoperable tools that make agent execution openly verifiable by anyone—without relying on the operator's word.
The announcement addresses the widening Verifiability Gap as autonomous AI agents begin to act faster than manual human oversight can track. Grounded in the core principle that verification cannot belong to the verified, unaffiliated, neutral third parties, as well as agent developers and deployers, must be able to openly verify the work of AI agents.
Open verification represents the next category of open source: extending open-source principles to the agentic stack where you cannot secure what you cannot inspect, and you cannot delegate what you cannot openly verify. By housing its open standards within the neutral commons of the Linux Foundation, the alliance ensures that machine trust rests on transparent mechanisms anyone can openly verify, rather than vendor promises or self-attestation.
"Built by our members and over 80 global security leaders, Proof-of-Control brings production-proven verifiable AI technologies together into a unified open standard," says Tricia Wang, Co-Founder and CEO of Advanced AI Society. "Safety checks and traditional audits are necessary, but when AI agents act in milliseconds, an annual or even quarterly stamp of approval isn't enough. Trust requires continuous monitoring anyone can inspect. Launching at LF Decentralized Trust prevents a single company from owning the referee."
"An agent's runtime log is just a claim until anyone can verify it for themselves," says Ken Huang, Co-Chair of Proof-of-Control. "Proof-of-Control turns open verification into standard operating practice: it requires an agent's authority to be defined before it acts, produces evidence at runtime that it stayed inside that authority, and makes that evidence auditable across the whole agent lifecycle."
"Trusting AI agents requires decentralized mechanisms that no single vendor can control or alter, making LF Decentralized Trust the natural home for this moment's urgency,” says Daniela Barbossa, General Manager, Decentralized Technologies, Linux Foundation, and Executive Director, LF Decentralized Trust. “Welcoming Advanced AI Society as a member and Proof-of-Control as a new LF Decentralized Trust lab connects their standard-setting work with our global ecosystem of builders who specialize in open verification technologies."
"In cryptography, the rule is: don't trust, verify. Autonomous AI shouldn't be an exception," says Dr. Hart Montgomery, CTO of LF Decentralized Trust. "When non-deterministic machines make decisions in milliseconds, human inspection fails. Only automated tools can keep pace, and while cryptography cannot be used to solve every security problem related to agents, it can help considerably with some of them. As an LF Decentralized Trust lab, Proof-of-Control brings the evidentiary rigor established in projects such as AnonCreds and Trust Over IP to the agentic stack, giving developers the building blocks to openly verify machine authority without relying on proprietary black boxes.”
Public Launch Briefing
Advanced AI Society and LF Decentralized Trust will co-host a public launch event on Wednesday, September 23, 2026, "Who's Watching the Machines? Launching Open Verification, the Proof-of-Control Standard for the Agentic Era," featuring alliance leaders, builders, deployers, and policy experts. Register at advancedaisociety.org/announcements/webinar1.
Industry & Expert Support
"We're running on a broken trust model, vendor assertions instead of evidence. That doesn't work when patient safety and our intellectual property are on the line. We need open verification: a transparent, inspectable way to know what these agents actually did. That's the gap Proof-of-Control closes, and it's why I've joined this effort at Advanced AI Society." — Charles Iheagwara, Global Head, AI & Cybersecurity, AstraZeneca; Distinguished Review Board of Proof-of-Control, Advanced AI Society
"As AI agents become more powerful and ubiquitous, knowing who they belong to -- and what they are authorized to do -- will be critical. Proof-of-Control is an important part of that." — Bruce Schneier, Cryptographer, Technical Advisor & Distinguished Review Board on Proof-of-Control, Advanced AI Society
“Financial markets and regulatory frameworks rely upon trust that is firmly grounded in verifiable, audit-ready evidence. Bringing that same legal and structural discipline to autonomous AI agents in the open gives the agentic economy a foundation of trust that institutions can actually rely on. Proof-of-Control provides the machine-verifiable proof necessary as AI systems assume real economic authority, especially in digital network financial markets." — J. Christopher Giancarlo, former Chairman, U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC); Senior Advisor, Advanced AI Society
“As agents become more capable, more numerous, and faster, "human in the loop" doesn't cut it anymore -- too generic, too vaguely specified -- and vendor self-regulation is too compromised. Agents need to be logged and the logs need to be open for claims about their behavior to be validated.” — Clay Shirkey, Vice Provost for AI and Technology in Education at New York University
"Midnight was built on the premise that you shouldn't have to take anyone's word for it — every transaction carries a proof that anyone can check. Proof-of-Control brings that same standard to AI agents, and we're glad to support it." — Bob Blessing-Hartley, CTO, Shielded Technologies
"At Oko Labs, we are building blockchain into the fabric of the internet, which lets verification live in the network itself. I spent years at Cisco making security provable enough to underwrite—first through a cyber assurance captive and then the blockchain practice—and Proof-of-Control does that exact job for agents. Prove control at the network layer, and machine risk becomes something the market can measure, price, and insure at agentic velocity." — Anoop Nannra, co-founder and CEO, Oko Labs
"As AI agents begin making decisions that affect people’s healthcare and money, ‘trust us’ isn’t a sufficient security model. We need open, continuous ways to prove what an agent was authorized to do and what it did: which healthcare decisions were made; how data was collected and used, and what was billed, when, and why; which is why Emme is participating in Proof-of-Control." — Erynn Petersen, CEO, Emme
“When an AI agent can move money, institutions need more than a persuasive explanation: they need defined authority and evidence they can check. Solv supports the development of Proof-of-Control as an open standard that helps separate what an agent was permitted to do from what the evidence shows it did.” — Patrick Duffy, Founder and CEO, Solv Labs
"When AI agents operate inside critical infrastructure, open verification moves from a commercial preference to a national security imperative. No security team or auditor should have to take an AI agent's word for its own actions after the fact. Proof-of-Control delivers the open, verifiable evidence required to keep critical national systems safe, transparent, and accountable." — Noah Ringler, former AI Policy Lead, U.S. Department of Homeland Security; Senior Advisor, Advanced AI Society
"Deploying autonomous agents without open verification is like flying an airplane with no brakes and no flight recorder. When agents execute thousands of actions a second, unverified errors don't just stay local, they compound exponentially into systemic crises. We established the Open Verification Lab at Advanced AI Society to give developers and security teams the open, tamper-evident tools, standards, and research needed to keep autonomous execution safe and within human control." — Jim Schwoebel, Director of Research, Advanced AI Society, CEO of Quome
"To safely delegate real authority to machines, we need decentralized cryptographic infrastructure that proves an agent stayed within its boundaries without forcing individuals, governments, or enterprises to expose private, sensitive data. Unchecked machine execution presents an existential civilizational risk, but with open verification, it becomes our greatest opportunity to delegate humanity's biggest challenges safely. Housing Proof-of-Control at LF Decentralized Trust gives society the open, tamper-evident foundation required to make trust in AI possible." — Michael Casey, Co-founder, Advanced AI Society
“I've spent the past decade investing in digital asset primitives because I believed open, decentralized protocols could give us new ways to establish and exchange value. Today, I see those same foundations taking on a broader role. As autonomous agents begin to act across our businesses and daily lives, we need a shared, verifiable reality: evidence of what they control, what happened, and which actions can be attributed to them. Proof-of-Control extends the work of decentralized infrastructure into the age of machine agency.” — Bettina Warburg, Co-Founder, Advanced AI Society
"Public trust cannot be built on closed-door audits or hand-picked stamps of approval. When autonomous agents make real-world decisions that affect people's lives, communities and public institutions shouldn't have to take a hired auditor's word for what happened. Open verification ensures machine accountability remains a public good rather than a walled garden." — Sheila Warren, Co-Founder, Advanced AI Society
About Advanced AI Society
Advanced AI Society is the alliance making trust in AI possible. Advanced AI Society builds the open verification ecosystem for AI security, uniting market leaders and deployers with insurers, policymakers, and civil society to standardize, deploy, and scale verifiable AI. advancedaisociety.org/
Contact
Tricia Wang
media@advancedaisociety.org
A photo accompanying this announcement is available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/e090355b-49d8-4774-b3dc-4caca1407509
