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.
Why 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 to try first.
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