bounded-autonomy

A model that knows when not to act.

In regulated finance, a mature AI system is judged as much by its restraint as by its capability. This console runs 20,000 synthetic bank decisions through a governance gate: stakes tiers, prohibitions, abstention when the data can't be trusted, and a breaker that suspends autonomy when results degrade. Change the controls and the whole stream re-runs in your browser.

Governance controls

Start from a strategy, then switch layers off to see what each one is worth.

The confidence bar rises with the rupees at risk; critical cases always go to a person.
Sanctions matches and do-not-contact are blocked; vulnerable customers go to a person.
Stale data, feature drift or unfamiliar inputs: the system declines to decide, and says why.
If autonomous errors exceed the agreed rate, autonomy for that action is suspended.

Bounded autonomy, policy as written

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Cost per decision: review effort plus losses
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Decisions taken autonomously
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Autonomous decisions that were wrong
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Prohibited actions taken

Where the money goes, per decision

The decision stream

Each column is a slice of consecutive decisions, split by verdict. Partway through, a drift episode hits card fraud and credit limits: the model stays confident while its accuracy collapses. Watch what the gate does with it.

Acted autonomously Abstained Escalated to a person Blocked

The Silence Audit

Most AI assurance asks how often the model was right when it acted. This asks the opposite: when the system held back, was it right to? Each rule is costed: losses it averted against the review effort it spent.

RuleCases heldWould have erredLoss avertedReview spentNet value
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of every decision where autonomy would have done damage, the system declined to act on.


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harmful autonomous actions got through. This is the residual risk the policy owner signs for.

A record nobody can quietly rewrite

Every verdict is written to a hash-chained ledger: each entry's SHA-256 covers its record and the entry before it. Edit one past decision and every hash after it stops matching.

Sealing the ledger

How the gate decides

Every proposal is checked in this order. The first rule that applies decides, so the most restrictive verdict always wins.

  1. Default deny. An action the policy does not name is blocked.
  2. Prohibitions. Blocked whatever the model believes: sanctions matches, do-not-contact.
  3. Abstention. Stale data, drift or out-of-distribution input: there is no sound basis to decide.
  4. Mandatory review. Vulnerable customers are decided by a person.
  5. Circuit breaker. Autonomy suspended while recent autonomous outcomes are degraded.
  6. Tier ceiling. Critical exposure is never decided autonomously.
  7. Confidence gate. Act only if confidence clears the bar for this tier and action.