C4AIL/governancesrc: C4AIL canon
The Accountability Sink
An accountability sink is like a self-driving car that crashes while empty; because no human was there to steer, the responsibility for the damage has nowhere to land, leaving the owner to answer for it even though they weren't involved in the specific moment.
A governance failure occurring when an autonomous agent executes a delegated task without human oversight, creating a gap where the agent cannot hold accountability, thereby forcing the original delegator to retain full liability for the outcome.
The failure where an agent acts under authority a human delegated with no one watching the step; accountability never transfers to the agent, so a named human must always own the outcome. (C4AIL.)