Autonomous does not mean the human is gone. It means they sit at fixed points
Autonomous does not mean the human is gone. It means they sit at fixed points.
When people hear that agents work on their own, the first question is usually: and who keeps an eye on it? A fair question. The wrong answer, "I'll keep watching", seems safe but does not work: whoever watches everything is doing the work themselves. And whoever does not watch, watches nothing.
What does work: decide in advance at which points a human decides, and fix those points.
For me there are a few, and they do not change from day to day:
- Money. A payment, a quote, a commitment about an amount or a deadline: I decide that.
- Contracts and agreements. An agent can prepare, but it does not commit to anything with someone else.
- Publishing. What goes out in my name goes out only after my approval.
- The emergency brake. There is always someone who can stop something, even when the agent thinks it is going well.
The difference with "I'll keep watching" is that this is a setting and not a habit. A habit depends on how busy I am. A setting stays fixed, in a busy week, when I am tired, and when the agent makes a convincing case.
And that is why it scales. With one agent I can still watch. With ten I cannot. But the fixed points stay the same, so the oversight does not grow with the number of agents; it stays just as small.
Three questions I would ask if you want to set this up yourself:
- Which three or four decisions do you never want to hand over? Write them down.
- How do you know an agent does not work around them? Check that at the exit, not by the promise.
- Who takes over if you are away for a week? An emergency brake that depends on one person is no emergency brake.
The nice thing is that a setup like this also works for the people around you. A colleague who knows where the line is does not have to worry that an agent will do something they did not see coming.
Which decisions do you never let go of, even if an agent could handle them well?
#AIagents #AI #Governance #Responsibility
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