Founding Co-Chair, AI SIGMA
Marc Hoag
Chair, AI & the Law Section, Beverly Hills Bar Association
Founder, Hoag Law.ai. Practice areas: AI deployment law, SaaS contracts, startup IP.
AI Standards Institute for Global Machine Adoption
Building the deployment-layer standards for AI adoption.
AI SIGMA develops model contract clauses, conformance criteria, and practitioner standards for organizations deploying frontier AI systems. Practitioner-led. Founding cohort now forming.
01The frame
Aviation's century of safety was built on standards. AI's century has not yet started.
The two-body model that built modern aviation has a clear standards-setter on the AI side (CAISI, UK AISI, EU AI Office, UN ISP). The industry counterpart — the deployment-layer institute that translates standards into contractable, practitioner-readable form — is missing. AI SIGMA is building it. More on the analogy →
Standards body
Industry institute
Aviation 1944 →
ICAO
Annexes to the Chicago Convention
IATA
Commercial & operational practice
AI now
CAISI · UK AISI · EU AI Office · UN ISP
Intergovernmental standards
AI SIGMA
Deployment-layer initiative — the gap
02First work product
Paper 01 In development — scheduled Q3 2026
Model Contract Clauses for Frontier AI Deployment, v0.1.
AI SIGMA's first public work product is a practitioner-oriented set of model clauses for frontier AI deployment, designed for use in SaaS, enterprise AI, procurement, and regulated-industry contracting.
Clause areas
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01
Representations and warranties
What the model is, what training data it was built on, and what the deploying organization can rely on contractually.
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02
Evaluation and testing
Pre-deployment evaluation obligations and the standard of care for capability, safety, and red-team testing.
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03
Deployment integrity
Contractual preservation of safeguards and operational constraints built into the model by the developing lab.
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04
Incident reporting
Definitions, thresholds, timelines, and recipients for reporting AI-related incidents and near-misses.
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05
Post-deployment monitoring
Ongoing observability, drift detection, and the parties' respective duties as model behavior evolves in production.
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06
Continuity
Service-level commitments, version pinning, and the deploying organization's right to operational stability.
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07
Deprecation
Notice, transition, and data-handling obligations when a model version or family is sunset.
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08
Framework mapping
Each clause is anchored to the NIST AI Risk Management Framework, ISO/IEC 42001, and the EU GPAI Code of Practice.
03Founding cohort
Founding cohort now forming.
AI SIGMA is forming an invitation-only founding cohort of attorneys, technical leads, procurement professionals, compliance officers, policy experts, and AI product leaders to help shape the first deployment-layer standards for AI adoption.
04Leadership
Founded and led by a practicing attorney.
05Research agenda
What follows.
The Institute's research program is structured around three forthcoming papers in the founding cohort's first eighteen months. Sequencing is set by the founding cohort.
AI as Counterparty: Agency, Capacity, and Contract in Agentic Deployments.
When an AI agent transacts on behalf of a deploying organization, who is the principal? Paper 02 develops a contracting framework for agentic AI consistent with the doctrine of agency, the Restatement (Third), and the emerging agent interoperability standards.
Deployment Conformance: A Certification Framework for Regulated Industries.
A certification scheme for AI deployment in regulated industries — health, finance, employment, critical infrastructure — distinct from organizational management-system standards. The foundational document for the Institute's certification program.
A fourth paper — on workforce disclosure and continuity standards for AI-adopting enterprises — is planned for the Institute's second year.
Quick answers.
- What is AI SIGMA?
- AI SIGMA -- the AI Standards Institute for Global Machine Adoption -- is a practitioner-led founding initiative developing deployment-layer standards for AI adoption: model contract clauses, deployment conformance criteria, and practitioner standards. Being organized as a 501(c)(6) trade association.
- Is AI SIGMA an AI safety institute?
- No. The AI safety institutes are intergovernmental bodies (CAISI, UK AISI, the EU AI Office, and the UN Independent International Scientific Panel on AI). AI SIGMA is the deployment-layer counterpart -- the industry institute that translates intergovernmental standards into contractable, practitioner-readable form.
- How do I join the founding cohort?
- The founding cohort is invitation-only, drawn from practitioners across the AI deployment layer. Submit your interest via the membership page and the Founding Co-Chair will personally review every submission.