what is AIBOM
What is AIBOM in the context of SBOM.
There is an argument they are one and the same thing; AI is just complex software
The key distinction being
- in software the bulk of the risk comes from executables and shared libraries which constitute the running code, and a small amount of the risk comes from the configuration settings, or data inputs
- in AI the bulk of the risk comes from the data/configuration settings (e.g trained weights), while the executable code is both physically smaller, by comparison and updates less regularly
In other words
- behaviour of typical software is driven be functional definition
- behaviour of AI is driven from dynamic data sets
Obviously this is a sliding scale, and the boundary is somewhat blurred.
However it is true that typical AI development workflows
- introduce new flavours of risk
- have a more complex development cycle involving broader stakeholders
- have more distributed stakeholders.
This increased complexity requires new innovation. But many of these innovation can be applied to traditional software also.
Another distinction we find useful to make
- SBOM: To contain, track and manage software supply chain risks
- AIBOM: To contain, track and manage information supply chain risks
Where information is "data" and manifest in AI systems both in the trained data sets and the trained weights