  Autonomous and intelligent systems (AIS) facilitate a wide range of
beneficial applications across a variety of different domains. However,
technical characteristics such as unpredictability and lack of transparency, as
well as potential unintended consequences, pose considerable challenges to the
current governance infrastructure. Furthermore, the speed of development and
deployment of applications outpaces the ability of existing governance
institutions to put in place effective ethical-legal oversight. New approaches
for agile, distributed and multilevel governance are needed. This work presents
a practical framework for multilevel governance of AIS. The framework enables
mapping actors onto six levels of decision-making including the international,
national and organizational levels. Furthermore, it offers the ability to
identify and evolve existing tools or create new tools for guiding the behavior
of actors within the levels. Governance mechanisms enable actors to shape and
enforce regulations and other tools, which when complemented with good
practices contribute to effective and comprehensive governance.
