What happens when a new employee brings their agent to work?
Happening now: a student graduates with an agent they trained over their time at university. It knows everything they’ve learned, every paper, every problem solved. Day one, they bring it to work.
We remember bring-your-own-device issues in the news circa 2009. We remember the threat of USBs and malware. The iPhone launched & nobody wanted corporate Blackberries anymore. Devices create dissonance and conflict. IT is always scrambling to adapt.
A rogue phone can’t sign contracts. A rogue agent can.
Amazon learned this at scale. $6.3 million in lost orders. 99% order volume drop across North America. Four severity one incidents in one week. I don’t need to review all the weekly fails of big corporate ai implementations… An internal memo admitted what everyone implicitly knows:
“Best practices and safeguards around generative AI usage haven’t been fully established yet.”
Newer and larger models are smarter and more reliable. But they fail unexpectedly. There is no relationship between size and how failures change over time. AI-generated code creates 70% more issues than human code.
That new hire’s personal agent? The company bears liability for its mistakes. The contracts it signs, the code it deploys, all of it lands on the company.
Like a dog or a device, you are responsible for your agent.
Lead your companies safely.
Best,
ps