A Comprehensive Guide to Contemporary AI Safety
Safer Agentic AI
Principles and Responsible Practices
A practical guide to governing, aligning, and securing autonomous AI systems. Written for policymakers, developers, and leaders navigating the challenges of increasingly capable AI.
What Experts Are Saying
Praise from leaders in AI, ethics, and technology governance
"Safer Agentic AI advances a pragmatic control architecture, by regulating agents by what they can actually do and imposing measurable safety gates on plans, tools, and autonomy, Watson and Hessami turn alignment from aspiration into auditable engineering."
"The work is timely and thought provoking; without the approaches they advocate there is a risk that the development of agentic AI will outpace the community's ability to ensure positive outcomes from its use."
"Agentic AI can bring humanity into a better future - if it is governed responsibly. I can think of no one better than Nell Watson and Ali Hessami to guide us all on that crucial journey."
"Nell Watson and Ali Hessami's new book is just in time, offering the actionable guidance we must have to ensure AI truly aligns with human values."
"With clarity and courage, Watson and Hessami expose how AI shapes our minds, organisations, and planet, and how we must build the guardrails to keep it serving life, not running it."
"Safer Agentic AI Principles and Responsible Practices is an essential read for those seeking to safeguard humanity's future in the Age of AI, serving as a reminder that we all are stewards and have a significant role to play. The book provides practical action items for agentic AI safety, combining ethical insight with governance strategies."
"Professors Hessami and Watson have produced a guide for safely and ethically engaging in 'first contact' with an alien intelligence. Agentic AI is a computational form of alien intelligence that did not arrive from outer space, but was instead whelped from human language itself – and it is here to stay."
"This book identifies the ethical questions and coordination challenges we will need to urgently resolve, if we want to keep AI agents safe. This comprehensive and up-to-date overview of agentic AI charts the many failure modes of current agentic AI technology, as well as potential future developments that will have to be taken into account."
WHAT IS AGENTIC AI?
Agentic AI systems set and pursue goals, adapt to situations, and make decisions autonomously. Unlike AI that merely recommends, these systems act directly in the world—breaking down tasks, experimenting, adjusting to feedback. This shift from advice to action is why safety becomes critical: mistakes can compound before humans notice or intervene. Examples include self-driving cars or AI managing logistics in real time.
Look Inside the Book
A comprehensive guide spanning AI fundamentals to practical governance frameworks
Table of Contents
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Part 1 The Dawn of AgencyCh 1 AI Overview From rule-based systems to neural networks — the journey to modern AICh 2 The Age of Agentic AI Understanding autonomous systems that can perceive, reason, and act
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Part 2 The Core Alignment ProblemCh 3 Goal Alignment of Agentic AI Systems Ensuring AI systems reliably pursue intended objectivesCh 4 Value Alignment and Embedding Ethics Value learning, preference aggregation, and ethical frameworksCh 5 Deceptive and Power-Seeking AI How AI systems can learn to deceive and accumulate influenceCh 6 Utility Convergence Common patterns in AI reasoning and emergent behaviours
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Part 3 The Governance and Safety ToolkitCh 7 Safety Fundamentals Core principles for building AI systems we can trustCh 8 Security and Guardrails Fail-safe defaults, fault tolerance, and runtime hardeningCh 9 Agentic Conflict Multi-agent dynamics and coordination challengesCh 10 Transparency and Interpretability Explainable AI, decision logs, and interpretable modelsCh 11 AI Governance Policy frameworks, accountability structures, and oversightCh 12 Weighted Capability Governance Measuring and controlling AI systems by their capabilities
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Part 4 The Human and Societal InterfaceCh 13 Working with Agentic AI Collaborative workflows, human-machine teaming, and trustCh 14 Psychosecurity AI's impact on cognition, manipulation, and mental wellbeingCh 15 Who Goes There? Identity, authentication, and distinguishing humans from AICh 16 Self-Watching Machines AI monitoring, oversight systems, and recursive safetyCh 17 Sustainability and Resource Stewardship Environmental impact and responsible resource use
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Part 5 The Uncharted FrontierCh 18 Disruptive Waves Emerging trends and accelerating capabilitiesCh 19 Frontier Concerns Advanced risks and long-term safety challengesCh 20 Superintelligence Strategy Preparing for transformative AI capabilitiesCh 21 Ten Principles for a Positive Future Actionable guidelines for responsible AI development
From the Foreword
"This timely volume addresses one of our field's most daunting challenges: ensuring the safe and beneficial development of increasingly autonomous AI systems. The authors combine technical expertise and ethical insight in a comprehensive framework... This book is invaluable for AI researchers, developers, policymakers, business leaders and anyone invested in the responsible future of artificial intelligence."
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KEY FOCUS AREAS
Our framework addresses nine critical dimensions for building safe and beneficial agentic AI systems.
Goal Alignment
Ensuring robust alignment between operational goals and human values.
Value Alignment
Identifying, codifying, and maintaining human values in AI systems.
Safe Operations
Ensuring safe operations throughout the system lifecycle.
Epistemic Hygiene
Maintaining cognitive clarity and accurate information management.
Transparency
Creating clear, interpretable rationales for AI reasoning processes.
Goal Termination
Implementing proper protocols for task completion and system sunsetting.
Security
Implementing comprehensive protection against threats and vulnerabilities.
Contextual Understanding
Establishing robust control mechanisms across operational contexts.
Responsible Governance
Establishing accountability, compliance, and oversight frameworks for responsible deployment.
Built on Rigorous Research
The book expands on a comprehensive framework developed by our 25-member Working Group of international experts in AI, ethics, law, and safety engineering.
Explore the Full FrameworkAbout the Authors
Leaders in AI safety, ethics, and governance
Nell Watson
Chair, Safer Agentic AI Working Group
Engineer, ethicist, and author of Taming the Machine. Chair of IEEE's Agentic AI Expert Focus Group and President of the European Responsible AI Office. Fellow of the British Computing Society and Royal Statistical Society. Listed as an Icon by the Royal Academy of Engineering.
Prof. Ali Hessami
Process Architect, Safer Agentic AI Working Group
Director of R&D at Vega Systems and Chair of IEEE P7000 Technology Ethics Standard. Vice Chair and Process Architect of IEEE ECPAIS. Fellow of the IET and Royal Society of Arts; Chartered Engineer. Visiting Professor at City University London and Beijing Jiaotong University.
OUR WORKING GROUP
Experts from diverse fields—AI, ethics, law, social sciences, and safety engineering—have contributed their time and expertise to develop this framework. We are deeply grateful for their engagement, ideas, and contributions.
Regular Contributors
- Ali Hessami
- Matthew Newman
- Sara El-Deeb
- Farhad Fassihi
- Mert Cuhadaroglu
- Scott David
- Hamid Jahankhani
- Nell Watson
- Sean Moriarty
- Isabel Caetano
- Roland Pihlakas
- Vassil Tashev
- Keeley Crockett
- Safae Essafi
- Zvikomborero Murahwi
- Lubna Dajani
- Salma Abbasi
Occasional Contributors
- Aisha Gurung
- Leonie Koessler
- Pramod Misra
- Aleksander Jevtic
- McKenna Fitzgerald
- Pranav Gade
- Alina Holcroft
- Michael O'Grady
- Rebecca Hawkins
- Md Atiqur R. Ahad
- Mrinal Karvir
- Sai Joseph
- Chantell Murphy
- Nikita Tiwari
- Tim Schreier
- Katherine Evans
- Patricia Shaw
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