Supervising AI Agents: The Rules of the Road

When you give an agent the ability to take actions, you're trusting it with real consequences. The teens (and adults) who use agents well think about permissions like a manager would: what can it do alone, what needs your sign-off, what's totally off-limits, and how do you undo mistakes?

Some examples

• Give agents read-only access first — let them propose, you execute.
• For irreversible actions (sends, payments, deletes), require human approval.
• Run agents in a sandbox or test account before production.
• Always have an undo path: backups, version control, drafts not sends.

Try it!

Pick one agent task. List which actions you'd auto-approve, which need review, and which are forbidden.

Practice this safely

Try this with a school, hobby, or family example where the stakes are low. Use the AI output as a draft you can question, not as the final answer.

1. 1Ask AI to explain permission in plain language, then underline anything that sounds uncertain or too broad.
2. 2Give it one detail from "Supervising AI Agents: The Rules of the Road" and ask for two possible next steps plus one reason each step might be wrong.
3. 3Check reversibility against a trusted source, teacher, adult, expert, or original document before you use it.