2 posts tagged with "governance"

The most impressive agent demos usually begin with capability. An agent researches a market, writes code, operates a browser, or produces a polished report from a short instruction.

Real organisations begin somewhere else: responsibility.

Before a person joins a company, we decide what they own, which systems they may access, who they work with, and when they must escalate. An AI agent needs the same clarity. Without it, intelligence becomes difficult to direct and even harder to trust.

Four elements turn an agent from a disposable assistant into a durable colleague: role, permission, memory, and accountability.

Many automation diagrams treat human approval as friction: a box to eliminate once the system becomes sufficiently intelligent.

That is the wrong model for consequential work.

Approval is not evidence that an agent failed. It is a deliberate assignment of responsibility. The agent prepares, validates, and recommends; the human decides when authority, judgement, or accountability cannot be delegated safely.