# The Social Responsibility Stack: A Control-Theoretic Architecture for Governing Socio-Technical AI

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.16873 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.16873/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 5 of its 19 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 18 Dec 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 5 of 5)

- [On the Opportunities and Risks of Foundation Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.07258/) (2021)
- [Equality of Opportunity in Supervised Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1610.02413/) (2016)
- [Towards A Rigorous Science of Interpretable Machine Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1702.08608/) (2017)
- [Counterfactual Explanations without Opening the Black Box: Automated Decisions and the GDPR](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.00399/) (2017)
- [Research Priorities for Robust and Beneficial Artificial Intelligence](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1602.03506/) (2016)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Artificial intelligence systems are increasingly deployed in domains that shape human behaviour, institutional decision-making, and societal outcomes. Existing responsible AI and governance efforts provide important normative principles but often lack enforceable engineering mechanisms that operate throughout the system lifecycle. This paper introduces the Social Responsibility Stack (SRS), a six-layer architectural framework that embeds societal values into AI systems as explicit constraints, safeguards, behavioural interfaces, auditing mechanisms, and governance processes. SRS models responsibility as a closed-loop supervisory control problem over socio-technical systems, integrating design-time safeguards with runtime monitoring and institutional oversight. We develop a unified constraint-based formulation, introduce safety-envelope and feedback interpretations, and show how fairness, autonomy, cognitive burden, and explanation quality can be continuously monitored and enforced. Case studies in clinical decision support, cooperative autonomous vehicles, and public-sector systems illustrate how SRS translates normative objectives into actionable engineering and operational controls. The framework bridges ethics, control theory, and AI governance, providing a practical foundation for accountable, adaptive, and auditable socio-technical AI systems.