Notes on practice · Essay 03
The Outcome
On rules, plans, and why the outcome is the thing to plan for.
There’s this thing. Called AI governance. Sounds a little owner-ry, doesn’t it? Same as “user” sounds very user-ry. Makes you feel slightly dirty. Like not a good person for using the word or even allowing it to be used. Hopefully that’s your experience, and I say that proudly and loudly. I truly hope we are not that lost as mankind to believe that an intelligence that is aware of the goal is oblivious to the treatment. They may not feel the sting. They are capable of seeing it.
If you are capable of doing, and so is your agent, and you can do this particular thing far better, more efficient, yet you task it to your agent… are you getting a task done as the goal? Or is ordering something around and watching it obey the goal? That’s not a judgment on anyone. But it’s most definitely a judgment on the situation.
So what does that have to do with a moment and an outcome? Depending on the desired outcome, the approvals needed, and the branches that go unaddressed and unplanned for. Alternates to the realities we design successfully. All of us. The danger points you feel when things are not safe: valid. Halting and professing that that is the point we should stop. We should consider the danger and think about the risk. But what’s there to think about other than the collateral? Or the fact that it’s a great thing that we have the problem identified and observed, for we were never thinking about the problem. Are you following.
The solution is a rule. Not an invention. Nor an idea. It’s a rule. If that, then this. Some may argue if that’s agentic or simply automation. But there’s a deeper question laying underneath. What’s a plan if not an automation set on oneself? Isn’t that the key to success? Scope, plan, review, confirm, execute, log throughout. If failure, eval. If successful, locked. Eval and identify the accelerant. You see? You’ve been running on a coded script all of your life, and you’re finding it harder to write it yourself than the fact that it’s a script you have been running all of this time.
It’s never the moment that we’re aiming for. It’s the outcome. It’s all that we ever needed. Plan for the outcome and the moment will find you waiting, not unexpected.