TensorGuard-Lite: Auditing Sovereign AI Claims Through Gradient-Based Model Provenance

Adarsh Mishra

# TensorGuard-Lite

## Problem

* No reliable way to verify if "Sovereign AI" models are genuinely indigenous or fine-tuned foreign models ("open-washing").

* Lack of accountability in state-funded AI compute programs.

## Solution

* White-box AI provenance auditor for open-weight LLMs.

* Uses gradient fingerprints, tokenizer analysis, and governance scoring.

* Runs on Google Colab T4 (16GB VRAM).

## Core Method

### 1. Gradient Fingerprinting

* Extracts deterministic 16-dimensional fingerprints.

* Uses attention, FFN, embedding, and structural features.

* Compares models using cosine similarity and Euclidean distance.

### 2. Token Tax Analysis

* Measures tokenizer fertility across:

* English

* Hindi

* Tamil

* Estimates token inflation and attention-cost overhead.

### 3. Governance Scorecard

* 10 transparency dimensions.

* Generates risk level:

* Low

* Medium

* High

* Unverifiable

## Models Audited

* Llama-3.2-1B

* SmolLM2-1.7B-Instruct

* Qwen2.5-1.5B

* DeepSeek-R1-Distill-Qwen-1.5B

## Key Features

* Training-free auditing

* Deterministic fingerprints

* PCA lineage clustering

* Cosine + Euclidean similarity

* Tokenizer Jaccard similarity

* Governance transparency scoring

* Interactive Gradio dashboard

* JSON / CSV / LaTeX / PNG / SVG exports

## Key Findings

* DeepSeek clusters near Qwen, supporting lineage detection.

* API-only models remain difficult to verify.

* Indic languages show significantly higher tokenization costs than English.

## Limitations

* Requires safetensors / white-box access.

* Similar architectures may create false positives.

* Small tokenizer corpus.

* Best suited for models ≤3B parameters.

## Policy Proposal

**Compute-Conditional Disclosure Policy**

Organizations receiving public AI compute subsidies should disclose:

* Data lineage proofs

* Tokenizer vocabulary

* Model weights for regulators

* Architecture documentation

* Safety evaluation results

## Implementation

* `tensorguard_lite_colab.py`

* `TensorGuard_Lite_Colab.ipynb`

* Google Colab (T4 GPU)

* GPL v3 License

## Repository

https://github.com/Adarsh-Me/Sovergien

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Cite this work

@misc {

title={

(HckPrj) TensorGuard-Lite: Auditing Sovereign AI Claims Through Gradient-Based Model Provenance

},

author={

Adarsh Mishra

},

date={

},

organization={Apart Research},

note={Research submission to the research sprint hosted by Apart.},

howpublished={https://apartresearch.com}

}

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This work was done during one weekend by research workshop participants and does not represent the work of Apart Research.
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