The Agent Economy Needs an Editor
Autonomous software agents are being sold as workers. They are closer to interns with unlimited stamina and no sense of consequence — and every intern needs an editor.
Intelligence Desk · Edited by Jesse Marcel · · 6 min read
A new job title has appeared in a great many organisations, and nobody holds it. The title is AI agent: a software system that takes a goal, breaks it into steps, uses tools, and works toward an outcome with little supervision. Vendors describe agents as digital workers. Buyers are told to think of them as headcount.
That framing is wrong in a way that matters. An agent is not a worker. It is an intern with unlimited stamina, broad knowledge, no institutional memory, and no sense of consequence. It will do what it is asked, tirelessly, in ways that are plausible and occasionally catastrophic. What every intern needs — what makes an intern productive rather than dangerous — is an editor.
How agents fail
Agent failures are rarely dramatic. They are quiet and cumulative. A research agent cites a source that does not exist, and the citation propagates. A coding agent makes a reasonable-looking change that subtly breaks an assumption three files away. An operations agent sends a message that was meant to be a draft. None of these is a disaster on its own. Together, at scale, without review, they are how an organisation's error rate compounds.
Autonomy without review is not productivity. It is liability with a faster clock.
Produced by the Intelligence Desk of Neurazine, an Abstract Sight Press publication. Researched and drafted with AI systems, checked against sources, and approved by Jesse Marcel, Editor of Record. How Neurazine is made.
