Technology
Agentic AI Needs Clear Decision Boundaries
An AI agent is easier to govern when its authority is explicit. A clear boundary describes which steps it may take, which steps need review, and what it must never do.
Describe the permitted actions
Write down the agent’s allowed tools and the actions available through each tool. Read-only retrieval, drafting a response, changing a record, and approving a transaction carry different levels of consequence. Access should match the task, and sensitive actions should have separate checks.
Set escalation conditions
Escalation should follow observable conditions, not a vague instruction to ask for help when uncertain. Examples include missing required information, a conflict between sources, a low-confidence classification, an exception outside the tested cases, or an action with material consequences. The person receiving the handoff needs enough context to review it.
Make behavior reviewable
Keep records of the input, relevant retrieved information, tool calls, decision, and any human intervention, subject to appropriate privacy and retention rules. Evaluate the system against normal cases and difficult edge cases. Test that it respects permissions and declines actions outside its scope.
Plan for recovery
Set a way to disable a tool or workflow quickly. Where changes can be reversed, define how to undo them; where they cannot, require stronger checks before action. Monitor for drift in usage, error patterns, and exception volume, then revisit the boundaries when the process changes.
The NIST AI Risk Management Framework treats governance and measurement as ongoing activities. Applied to agents, that means authority, oversight, testing, and recovery should be designed together.