Search papers, labs, and topics across Lattice.
This paper reviews accountability mechanisms for Large Language Models (LLMs) across various high-stakes domains, analyzing 122 primary studies and 12 regulatory documents to identify gaps and tensions in current frameworks. It introduces the Layered Accountability Architecture Framework (LAAF), which categorizes accountability into four layers鈥攑rovenance, application logic, human oversight, and governance鈥攚hile mapping these dimensions onto existing regulatory standards like the EU AI Act. The findings reveal critical deficiencies in human oversight and accountability metrics, highlighting the need for a more integrated approach to LLM accountability in practice.
LLMs lack robust accountability structures, with four critical gaps that could lead to unchecked harm in high-stakes environments.
Large Language Models (LLMs) operate in hospitals, courtrooms, banks, and public service desks, where fluent, confident outputs are treated as authoritative even when ungrounded or incorrect. When such an output contributes to harm, who is answerable, and through what mechanisms can responsibility be traced, explained, and acted upon? Following PRISMA guidance, five databases were searched from January 2022 to March 2026 against four review questions; of 4,512 records identified, 122 primary studies were included, together with 12 regulatory and standards documents analysed as primary sources. The review consolidates a sociotechnical account of accountability as an actor-forum relation resolved into five dimensions, and synthesises mechanisms across four families: technical controls, human oversight, organisational governance, and documentation and traceability, each with a maturity assessment. The corpus is read through a four-layer classification device spanning provenance, application logic, human oversight, and governance and redress, cross-cut by traceability, role clarity, and continuous monitoring. Both are mapped onto the EU AI Act, whose high-risk obligations have applied since 2 August 2026, the NIST AI RMF with its Generative AI Profile, ISO/IEC 42001, and sectoral guidance in healthcare, consumer finance, education, and the public sector. Four persistent gaps emerge: under-specification of human oversight, absence of shared accountability metrics, disciplinary disconnection, and limited empirical evaluation, alongside five structural tensions that no surveyed instrument resolves. The review closes by consolidating the classification device into an integrated accountability architecture, LAAF, with cybersecurity aligned to the OWASP LLM Top 10 (2025); it is a synthesis of the surveyed evidence rather than a validated artefact.
