“Since we do not now have any ways of making computers wise, we ought not now to give computers tasks that demand wisdom.”Joseph Weizenbaum · Computer Power and Human Reason · 1976 · Computer Power and Human Reason (1976), Introducere
Autonomy is granted by reversibility: suggest, ask for approval, act and report.
The levels of autonomy: suggest; act with approval; act and report; act alone. They are assigned by reversibility and blast radius, not by the model's confidence. The approval interface shows the action or the diff, not the reasoning essay; it batches approvals; it times out on the safe side. The regulatory state in September 2026: the prohibited practices (Article 5 of the AI Act) have applied since 2 February 2025; the transparency duties (Article 50) since 2 August 2026; for the high-risk systems of Annex III, the "digital omnibus" package deferred the obligations to 2 December 2027, and the human oversight of Article 14 applies to those. Even outside high risk: a log a human can read and an owner for every agent. Weizenbaum's question is not whether it can be done, but whether it ought to be.
Why it matters An agent without an approval threshold is an employee with signing rights on the account and no manager.