What AI Can Tell You About Your Authorization Policies (2025) (www.windley.com)

AI is evolving to play a crucial role in auditing authorization policies, not as a decision-maker but as a tool for understanding existing permissions and risks within systems. In recent discussions, AI is depicted as a lens to reveal the nuances of fixed policies, enabling organizations to assess their authorization landscape objectively. This shift from a creative role—where AI proposes changes during policy authoring—to a more analytical position during audits changes the interaction dynamics significantly, ensuring that AI is focused on clarity rather than creativity. The implications for the AI/ML community are profound, as this approach to utilizing AI can enhance transparency and accountability in policy implementation. By constraining AI’s capabilities to explain current access levels, audit teams can gain insights into how broadly access is granted and whether these permissions are justifiable. For instance, through specific queries, AI can map out user permissions without suggesting changes, allowing teams to surface potentially unintended access pathways and undocumented assumptions. This approach reinforces the importance of understanding existing frameworks and stresses that AI's role in audits is not to redesign but to illuminate, thereby fostering confidence in authorization systems.