ISO/IEC AI standards (22989, 42001, 42005) and adjacent frameworks
The Body of Knowledge names three ISO/IEC standards, and they are routinely confused because their numbers are close and their names sound alike. Each does one distinct job.
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Create a free accountWhy this matters for the AIGP exam
Standards questions are matching questions: a described activity, three or four candidate standards. Keeping the jobs separate is the whole skill.
The essentials
- ISO/IEC 22989 — concepts and terminology. The vocabulary standard: it defines what an AI system, life cycle stage or stakeholder role means, so that everything else has a shared language. If a question is about definitions, this is the answer.
- ISO/IEC 42001 — AI management systems. The organisational standard, in the same family as ISO 27001 for security: requirements for establishing, implementing and continually improving an AI management system across the plan-do-check-act cycle. It is the standard an organisation certifies against.
- ISO/IEC 42005 — AI system impact assessment. Guidance for assessing an individual system's impacts on people and society, feeding the organisation-level machinery that 42001 builds.
- The frame that keeps them straight: 22989 gives the words, 42001 governs the organisation, 42005 assesses the system.
- Adjacent frameworks — the NIST AI RMF and ISO 23894 on AI risk management — cover similar ground voluntarily; 42001 is the one with certification attached.
What the exam asks
Match a described activity to its standard, and know which one an organisation can be certified against.
Going deeper
This page is the condensed version. The full topic — with the detail above expanded and practice questions attached — is in the app, inside Domain II. Domain I, a quarter of the course, is free.
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