How to Bound AI Agents With Policy Gates

Description and use

<p>An AI agent becomes much more interesting the moment it can do something.<br> It can send the email. Update the record. Publish the page. Delete the file. Trigger the deployment.<br> That is also the moment when a prompt stops being a sufficient safety boundary.<br> You can tell an agent:</p> <blockquote> <p>Never make a destructive production change without approval.</p> </blockquote> <p>But the component interpreting that instruction is also the component deciding what to do next.<br> If the action matters, "the model was told not to" is a weak enforcement mechanism.<br> A stronger design

Problem

<p>An AI agent becomes much more interesting the moment it can do something.<br> It can send the email. Update the record. Publish the page. Delete the file. Trigger the deployment.<br> That is also the moment when a prompt stops being a sufficient safety boundary.<br> You can tell an agent:</p> <blockquote> <p>Never make a destructive production change without approval.</p> </blockquote> <p>But the component interpreting that instruction is also the component deciding what to do next.<br> If the action matters, "the model was told not to" is a weak enforcement mechanism.<br> A stronger design

Outcome

<p>An AI agent becomes much more interesting the moment it can do something.<br> It can send the email. Update the record. Publish the page. Delete the file. Trigger the deployment.<br> That is also the moment when a prompt stops being a sufficient safety boundary.<br> You can tell an agent:</p> <blockquote> <p>Never make a destructive production change without approval.</p> </blockquote> <p>But the component interpreting that instruction is also the component deciding what to do next.<br> If the action matters, "the model was told not to" is a weak enforcement mechanism.<br> A stronger design

Evidence

How to Bound AI Agents With Policy Gates

Source