Hardware-enforced isolated governance device and method for non-deterministic artificial intelligence inference

Abstract

This invention discloses a hardware-enforced isolation governance device and method for nondeterministic artificial intelligence inference, aiming to provide a final entity adjudication valve for the risk control of artificial intelligence output. The governance device belongs to a different security domain from a nondeterministic inference environment and is configured to impose unavoidable hardware-enforced control on the ability of inference output events to be transmitted to their target computing environment. The hardware isolation adjudication block within the device receives output events via a constrained data interface and loads a versioned governance rule set to execute deterministic adjudication, preventing unconfirmed events from being transmitted to the target computing environment; this adjudication process is strictly limited to not modifying the parameters, weights, or internal state of the artificial intelligence model. Simultaneously, the device couples governance data with a hardware-based non-retrograde mechanism, applying protection supported by hardware state, thereby generating tamper-resistant governance evidence. Thus, this invention achieves hardware-level output enforcement protection and post-event independent replay verification while maintaining the freedom of inference generation.

Claims

1. A hardware-enforced isolation management device for nondeterministic artificial intelligence inference, configured to receive inference output events generated by a nondeterministic inference environment, and configured to impose unavoidable hardware-enforced control on the ability of the inference output events to be transmitted to their target computing environment, so that inference output events that have not been confirmed and released by a deterministic ruling cannot be transmitted to their target computing environment, the management device comprising: (a) a data interface constrained by a hardware-enforced access control mechanism, configured to receive the inference output events from the nondeterministic inference environment; and (b) a hardware isolation ruling block coupled to the data interface and belonging to a different security domain from the nondeterministic inference environment, wherein: (i) The hardware isolation adjudication block is configured to load a versioned governance rule set; (ii) it makes a deterministic adjudication on the inference output event based solely on the versioned governance rule set; (iii) it directly controls whether the inference output event is transmitted to the target computing environment based on the adjudication result, so as to realize the permission or blockage of the inference output event; (iv) it generates governance data corresponding to the adjudication; (c) a hardware non-retrograde mechanism, coupled to the hardware isolation adjudication block, is used to apply non-retrograde protection supported by hardware state to the governance data to prevent the governance data from being rolled back, reset, or otherwise unauthorized. Authorized modification; wherein: (i) the hardware isolation adjudication block is physically or logically independent of the nondeterministic inference environment, does not participate in the execution of the inference process of the environment, and does not modify its artificial intelligence model parameters, weights, or internal inference state; (ii) the data interface is a one-way data path, so that the inference output event can only be transmitted unidirectionally from the nondeterministic inference environment to the hardware isolation adjudication block; (iii) the state change of the hardware non-retrogression mechanism is not controlled by the nondeterministic inference environment; (iv) the governance data forms a verifiable and tamper-resistant governance evidence state within the governance device.

2. The governance apparatus as described in claim 1, wherein the data interface constrained by the hardware forced access control mechanism restricts the inference output events from being transmitted unidirectionally to the hardware isolation decision block at the application data level, and the hardware forced isolation mechanism makes the hardware isolation decision block invisible to the internal memory and inference pipeline of the nondeterministic inference environment, thereby blocking any unauthorized probes to the internal state of the model.

3. The governance apparatus as described in claim 1, wherein the hardware isolation adjudication block is implemented as a hardware isolation trusted execution environment, and the memory and computing resources of the environment are physically or cryptographically isolated from the regular execution environment where the nondeterministic inference environment is located through the underlying hardware architecture.

4. The governance apparatus as described in claim 1, wherein the hardware isolation decision block is a dedicated secure coprocessor that has dedicated secure memory and does not share computing pipelines with the nondeterministic inference environment.

5. The governance device as described in claim 1, wherein the governance device and the nondeterministic inference environment are integrated in a system-in-package or multi-chip module, and: the nondeterministic inference environment is implemented on a first die; the hardware isolation decision block is implemented on a physically separated second die; and the in-package interconnect mechanism between the first die and the second die constitutes the data interface constrained by the hardware-forced access control mechanism.

6. The governance apparatus as described in claim 1, wherein the hardware isolation decision block is configured to support a cross-boundary hardware trigger startup module, which, upon detecting a specific hardware event, wakes the hardware isolation decision block from an idle state to perform decision-making functions; wherein, The triggering condition is implemented by one or a combination of the following hardware-level mechanisms: (a) a security monitoring call or equivalent architecture-level cross-boundary instruction from the regular execution environment or the nondeterministic inference environment; (b) a dedicated security interrupt signal routed by the hardware interrupt controller; (c) an external boot request received via a hardware communication interface and cryptographically signed; (d) a hardware polling mechanism that monitors changes in the state of a specific hardware register or shared secure memory address; and the execution of the boot module does not constitute a modification to the pipeline scheduling or memory state of the nondeterministic inference environment.

7. The governance apparatus as described in claim 1, wherein the hardware isolation adjudication block includes a read-only finite state machine and a non-recursive parser for parsing and adjudicating the inference output events, and uses only statically allocated memory during the adjudication process without performing dynamic memory configuration.

8. The governance apparatus as described in claim 1, wherein the versioned governance rule set includes an operating mode parameter that configures the hardware isolation adjudication block to operate in a zero-trust mode, in which the deterministic adjudication is pre-blocked to block all inference output events and only allows events that meet the whitelist characteristics and are verified by hardware identity credentials.

9. The governance apparatus as described in claim 1, wherein the hardware isolation adjudication block further includes a security rule set update module configured to replace the versioned governance rule set via cold update or hot update, and the update module must verify the cryptographic signature through the hardware root of trust and check the version number through the hardware non-retrograde mechanism before loading the new version of the governance rule set to refuse downgrade rollback.

10. The governance device as claimed in claim 1, wherein the hardware non-rewind mechanism is composed of physical hardware components, including at least one hardware monotonically increasing counter, a replay protection memory block, or an electronic fuse, for combining with the governance data to form a hardware-anchored seal to prevent any replay or rollback attack against the governance data.

11. The governance apparatus as described in claim 1, wherein the hardware isolation adjudication block further includes a hardware governance evidence encapsulation logic configured to associate the inference output event, the identification information of the versioned governance rule set, and the governance data, and to perform signature or hash calculation through a dedicated cryptographic engine to output a hardware-anchored governance evidence unit.

12. The governance apparatus as described in claim 11, wherein when the dedicated cryptographic engine generates each hardware-anchored governance evidence unit, it associates the hardware-anchored governance evidence unit with the previous hardware-anchored governance evidence unit in a cryptographic chain manner, so that each newly generated hardware-anchored governance evidence unit contains a hash value of the previous hardware-anchored governance evidence unit, thereby forming an immutable hardware evidence chain maintained by the dedicated cryptographic engine.

13. The governance apparatus as described in claim 11, wherein the deterministic decision made by the hardware-isolated decision block is based on the operation of an internal hardware clock and an isolated memory state, such that under the condition of inputting the same inference output event and loading the same versioned governance rule set, a verifiable and consistent decision result will necessarily be generated, and the derivation trajectory of the result and the associated hardware-anchored governance evidence unit have mathematical and cryptographic reconstructibility to support replay and independent verification.

14. The governance apparatus as claimed in claim 11, wherein the governance apparatus further includes a hardware replay protection storage area for storing, in an atomic write manner, the state of a monotonically increasing counter and the verification root value of the governance data.

15. The governance apparatus as described in claim 1, wherein the hardware isolation decision block includes a non-blocking processing pipeline and has local autonomous execution capability, characterized in that: the hardware isolation decision block is configured to perform decision-making operations solely relying on the versioned governance rule set loaded locally, without requiring an external network connection for execution; when a specific inference output event triggers a rule requiring external authorization, the hardware isolation decision block marks the specific event as a pending state, and the non-blocking processing pipeline continuously receives and performs the deterministic decision on subsequent inference output events, unaffected by the pending state event.

16. The governance apparatus as described in claim 1, wherein the hardware isolation decision block further includes an offline store-and-forward mechanism configured to detect an external network connection status; in an offline state, temporarily store the governance data in a queue protected by the hardware isolation decision block, such that the governance data cannot be accessed or modified by the nondeterministic inference environment during the offline state; and in a connection recovery state, synchronize the governance data in the queue to an external verification server in a batch encryption manner.

17. The governance apparatus as described in claim 16, wherein when a specific inference output event triggers a rule requiring external authorization and is marked as a pending state, the offline store-and-forward mechanism is further configured to: in the offline state, in addition to temporarily storing the governance data, also encapsulate the inference output event in the pending state in the queue protected by the hardware isolation adjudication block; and when the connection is restored, synchronize the governance data and the inference output event in the pending state to the external verification server in a batch encryption manner, so that an external authorization entity can perform subsequent verification or adjudication confirmation.

18. The governance apparatus as described in claim 15, wherein the hardware isolation decision block is further configured to: maintain a physical output lock state for the inference output event in the pending state, and release the lock state and perform a release or correction action on the inference output event only after the hardware isolation decision block verifies a cryptographic signature approval instruction from an external authorized entity.

19. The governance apparatus as described in claim 1, wherein the hardware isolation decision block, when an event buffer capacity approaches an upper limit, sends a backpressure signal to the nondeterministic inference environment through a path constrained by a hardware access control mechanism to limit the generation rate of the inference output events.

20. A hardware-enforced isolation governance method for nondeterministic artificial intelligence inference, characterized in that the method comprises: (a) executing a nondeterministic artificial intelligence inference program by a nondeterministic inference environment and generating an inference output event; (b) executing a deterministic decision by a hardware-enforced decision block, the hardware-enforced decision block belonging to a different security domain from the nondeterministic inference environment and isolated through a hardware-enforced access control mechanism, so that the nondeterministic inference environment cannot directly modify the decision logic or governance data of the hardware-enforced decision block, the deterministic decision step comprising: loading a versioned governance rule set; adjudicating the inference output event only according to the versioned governance rule set; and generating the governance data corresponding to the decision; (c) applying non-retrograde protection supported by hardware physical state to the governance data by a hardware non-retrograde mechanism to prevent the governance data from being rolled back, reset, or modified without authorization; wherein, The inference output event is transmitted to the hardware isolation decision block via a path constrained by the hardware-enforced access control mechanism; and the deterministic decision does not modify the model parameters, weights or internal inference state of the non-deterministic inference environment, but only restricts or handles the publication of the inference output event. The method is based on an unbypassable hardware-enforced control, which prevents the inference output event that has not been confirmed and released by the deterministic decision from being transmitted to a target computing environment.

21. A non-transitory computer-readable storage medium having instructions stored thereon that, when executed by a processor, cause it to perform the hardware forced isolation management method as described in claim 20.

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