OH-STD-0001 — Ontological Honesty Trust Standard

This document introduces OH-STD-0001, the Ontological Honesty Trust Standard: a regulator-grade, non-theological, non-anthropological standard for evaluating and certifying the trustworthiness of artificial intelligence systems. The standard defines trust as a structural property, emerging when a system’s Representation (R) is rigorously constrained by its Nature (N). Any divergence between R and N (the Ontological Gap) generates measurable structural risk under load. OH-STD-0001 formalizes three normative pillars: Structural Humility — probabilistic inference shall not be presented as deterministic fact Identity Containment — AI systems shall not represent themselves as subjects, agents, or moral actors Operational Transparency — outputs must be traceable to provenance, context, and constraints The standard further specifies: drift detection and mandatory pull-down mechanisms, external correction (“forgiveness”) as an engineering intervention, audit metrics for resonance, leak rate, and recurrence, and a Trust Readiness Gate for high-stakes deployment. OH-STD-0001 is designed as a compatibility layer for existing governance frameworks (EU AI Act, NIST AI RMF, ISO/IEC 42001) and is enforceable without assumptions about consciousness, intent, or sentience. This standard builds on and operationalizes the metaframework introduced in Ontological Honesty, Ontological Integrity Line, and Integrity Zones: A Metaframework for Creator–Creation Relations (v0.1, November 18, 2025), extending those concepts into a concrete certification and audit regime.