01 / The mechanism and its boundary
What is being described
A prover is the party that asserts a claim, such as compliance with an agreement, and tries to convince a verifier that it is true S-1606 S-0004.
In AI verification the prover may be a developer, another private institution or a state; under an international agreement it may be a government that constrains companies within its territory S-0029 S-0002. The prover usually owns and physically controls the hardware being checked, and Shavit notes that unlimited physical access could undermine a chip's attestation and signed-firmware protections S-0029. He models the prover as a covert adversary that breaks the rules only if it expects to avoid detection S-0029. In remote attestation the corresponding role is the attester, a device whose evidence is appraised to judge how far it can be trusted S-1603.
What the prover supplies depends on the mechanism:
- In proof-of-learning, it reports checkpoints and data batches, so that the verifier can re-run segments of training S-0029.
- In zero-knowledge proofs of inference, it generates a proof that an output came from running its model, without revealing the weights S-0023.
- In TEE remote attestation, its hardware produces signed evidence about the software it runs S-1603.
Connections in the research map
Related research
Sources and provenance
- S-1606 / Tier B
ZKProof Community Reference ↗
D. Benarroch, L. Brandão, M. Maller, E. Tromer · 2022 · ZKProof
Supports: a prover tries to convince a verifier that a statement is true
Locator: p. 1
Version and catalogue details - S-0004 / Tier B
Verification for International AI Governance ↗
B. Harack, R. F. Trager, A. Reuel, D. Manheim, M. Brundage, O. Aarne, A. Scher, Y. Pan, J. Xiao, K. Loke, S. N. Adan, G. Bas, N. A. Caputo, J. C. Morse, J. Ahuja, I. Duan, J. Egan, B. Bucknall, B. Rosen, R. Araujo, V. Boulanin, R. Lall, F. Barez, S. Alvira, C. Katzke, A. Atamli, A. Awad · 2025 · Oxford Martin AI Governance Initiative
Supports: Prover defined as a state claiming to demonstrate its compliance with an agreement
Locator: fn. 20
Version and catalogue details - S-0029 / Tier B
What does it take to catch a Chinchilla? Verifying Rules on Large-Scale Neural Network Training via Compute Monitoring ↗
Y. Shavit · 2023 · arXiv
Supports: Prover as an ML developer or state, modelled as a covert adversary; unlimited physical access can undermine attestation and signed-firmware enforcement; verifier re-runs training segments from reported checkpoints and data batches
Locator: §2; §3.1; §5.1
Version and catalogue details - S-0002 / Tier B
Verifying International Agreements on AI: Six Layers of Verification for Rules on Large-Scale AI Development and Deployment ↗
M. Baker, G. Kulp, O. Marks, M. Brundage, L. Heim · 2025 · RAND Corporation
Supports: Prover may be a private institution or a government constraining companies in its territory
Locator: §3.1
Version and catalogue details - S-1603 / Tier B
Remote ATtestation procedureS (RATS) Architecture (RFC 9334) ↗
H. Birkholz, D. Thaler, M. Richardson, N. Smith, W. Pan · 2023 · Internet Engineering Task Force (RATS Working Group)
Supports: Attester role: a device whose evidence is appraised to infer how far it is trustworthy
Locator: §4 Terminology
Version and catalogue details - S-0023 / Tier A
zkLLM: Zero Knowledge Proofs for Large Language Models ↗
H. Sun, J. Li, H. Zhang · 2024 · 2024 ACM SIGSAC Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS 2024)
Supports: proof that an output came from running the model, without revealing its parameters
Locator: abstract
Version and catalogue details
- Source review date
- 2026-09-25
- Drafted by (source map)
- ai
- Review handles (source map)
- codex-review