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When Does an Intelligent System Become Trustworthy? A Maturity Model for Transparency, Reliability, Human Oversight, Governance Integration, and Continuous Assurance
Trustworthiness is frequently treated as a label attached to an intelligent system once selected technical, ethical, or governance requirements have been addressed. Such a binary interpretation is inadequate because system properties, operating conditions, organizational responsibilities, stakeholder expectations, and available assurance evidence change throughout the lifecycle. This article proposes a conceptual trustworthiness maturity model that interprets trustworthiness as an evolutionary system capability rather than a fixed attribute, certification outcome, or deployment decision. The model organizes progression across six levels: unstructured or ad hoc practices; foundational transparency and documentation; managed reliability, explainability, and human oversight; defined governance integration and accountability; continuous assurance and lifecycle monitoring; and adaptive trustworthiness learning and system updating. Foundational maturity requires accessible system, model, data, dataset, and decision documentation together with provenance, traceability, auditability, and maintained evidence trails. Higher capability requires context-sensitive evidence of reliability, validity, robustness, uncertainty, calibration, explanation quality, and meaningful human intervention. Advanced maturity additionally depends on responsibility mapping, organizational and institutional accountability, lifecycle governance, continuous monitoring, drift review, incident learning, assurance review, and controlled feedback updating. The principal contribution is an integrated maturity structure that connects technical, human, organizational, and lifecycle capabilities while retaining explicit boundaries against overclaiming. Maturity levels may help structure assessment planning, identify capability gaps, and clarify development priorities, but they do not independently prove trustworthiness, safety, ethical sufficiency, legal compliance, certification eligibility, or deployment readiness. The proposed model therefore supports conceptual maturity assessment and future empirical validation rather than operational prescription.
Journal of Trustworthy and Explainable Intelligent Systems
Original Research | Open access | 15 March 2026 | Article: 79

Trust Must Survive Deployment—A Continuous Assurance Lifecycle for Drift Detection, Explanation Monitoring, Incident Response, Model Restriction, and Retirement in Adaptive AI Systems
Trustworthy artificial intelligence cannot be established permanently before deployment because deployed and adaptive systems operate within environments that continue to change. Data distributions, relationships between inputs and outcomes, user behaviour, organizational workflows, system dependencies, and decision consequences may diverge from the conditions represented during development. This article proposes a continuous trustworthiness lifecycle for organizing the evidence and governance activities needed after deployment. The approach begins with a versioned deployment context and risk baseline, followed by monitoring of data, concept, behavioural, performance, calibration, uncertainty, and explanation changes. It integrates technical monitoring with human interpretation, user and affected-person feedback, incident identification, corrective action, accountability review, model restriction, temporary suspension, retirement, and assurance updating. The framework distinguishes drift signals from confirmed degradation and treats explanation stability as a separate assurance concern rather than assuming that stable predictive performance preserves explanation quality. Incidents and complaints are positioned as lifecycle evidence that may trigger investigation, remediation, updating, rollback, restriction, suspension, or retirement review. These responses remain human-governed because monitoring indicators cannot independently determine safety, ethical acceptability, legal compliance, or appropriate end-of-life decisions. The main contribution is a conceptual lifecycle that connects post-deployment monitoring with decision records, responsibility allocation, residual-risk communication, and organizational learning. It supports structured reasoning about whether an adaptive AI system should continue operating unchanged, undergo correction, operate within a narrower scope, be suspended, or enter retirement review. The framework requires domain-specific evaluation and institutional governance and should not be interpreted as an implemented assurance process, certification model, or deployment-readiness determination.
Journal of Trustworthy and Explainable Intelligent Systems
Original Research | Open access | 15 March 2026 | Article: 92