> It’s actually fine if agents make a lot of boneheaded mistakes. What’s not ok is if they keep making the same mistakes.
I worked in life sciences for a bit. There is a process in clinical trials called corrective and preventative actions (CAPA). You'll also find this in other areas where failure tolerance is low (e.g. aircraft).
It's simple: when a mistake happens, you run your CAPA process (Google CAPA form and see examples to extrapolate what that process might look like) and determine the root cause and the correction to the process that allowed the mistake to happen in the first place.
(At least as a SaaS vendor in life sciences, when we had a CAPA (e.g. after a SEV0 failure), it would be folded into our SOPs and then we would be required to retrain on the SOP. Auditors would want to see our evidence of CAPAs, the versions of our SOPs, the records of training. All to extreme for most shops, but I add this for context/color)
This is something most eng shops do not have the discipline for since it requires some diligence.
Should it be fully agentic? Should there be human intervention here to approve the CAPA? Open questions to be answered.
> Should it be fully agentic? Should there be human intervention here to approve the CAPA? Open questions to be answered.
I think a point we are grappling with is, what necessitates human intervention, like philosophically. Is it accountability? I was thinking about this in terms of code review and it's not like we would fire someone if they broke prod, so at what point do we need someone accountable. Maybe it's for approvals for certain classes of risk (like those associated with actual harm to life). It's also not lost on me that many human systems lack accountability.
I think there's a pretty clear and wide gulf between "nobody could have seen that coming", or "I just wasn't on my A game", and frank negligence.
I once worked at a very large company, and one of my coworkers was like "eh, I'm not going to do any of this work, because I don't have to", and that was a clear indicator that the problem wasn't (just) with the system, but with him individually.
I've had a similar experience, also at a very large organization. In my case this person chose that kind of environment because it allowed them to work on side stuff while waiting for approvals, etc. A lot of people in very large companies don't view the grind of organizational friction inhibiting their actions as problematic.
CharlieDigital · · focus · HN ↗
It's simple: when a mistake happens, you run your CAPA process (Google CAPA form and see examples to extrapolate what that process might look like) and determine the root cause and the correction to the process that allowed the mistake to happen in the first place.
(At least as a SaaS vendor in life sciences, when we had a CAPA (e.g. after a SEV0 failure), it would be folded into our SOPs and then we would be required to retrain on the SOP. Auditors would want to see our evidence of CAPAs, the versions of our SOPs, the records of training. All to extreme for most shops, but I add this for context/color)
This is something most eng shops do not have the discipline for since it requires some diligence.
Should it be fully agentic? Should there be human intervention here to approve the CAPA? Open questions to be answered.
skinfaxi · · focus · HN ↗
I think a point we are grappling with is, what necessitates human intervention, like philosophically. Is it accountability? I was thinking about this in terms of code review and it's not like we would fire someone if they broke prod, so at what point do we need someone accountable. Maybe it's for approvals for certain classes of risk (like those associated with actual harm to life). It's also not lost on me that many human systems lack accountability.
jaggederest · · focus · HN ↗
I once worked at a very large company, and one of my coworkers was like "eh, I'm not going to do any of this work, because I don't have to", and that was a clear indicator that the problem wasn't (just) with the system, but with him individually.
skinfaxi · · focus · HN ↗
DonCrespo · · focus · HN ↗
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