The shift to agentic AI — bots that don’t just assist but actually execute tasks and exert judgment — will raise the stakes. As AI gets more humanlike, and its role within the company gets more senior, how it responds to complex challenges and conflicts will matter more.
When is it better to ignore a command?
When could pursuing a short-term goal lead to longer-term problems?
When is it OK to tell the boss to “shove it”?
For better or worse, it’s really no different to what companies seek in their employees.
For less critical and more process-driven jobs, employers seek workers who follow rules. At senior levels, where an individual’s actions can affect the value of the whole firm, good judgment in unusual situations becomes valuable, and commands higher pay.
This reminds me of a conversation I had with my actuary friend Chris last night , while walking over the Thames to Waterloo. We had been discussing with another actuary friend Derek our wish to automate CDC’s pricing to a point that no judgement was required and technology managed fairness between all. You can read Chris’ thoughts in the Prof Pens/blog article here
What we’d concluded in an hour of rigorous debate is that you cannot automate fairness as well as you can use the judgement of smart people. This is why you need to have an actuary challenging the decisions of the other actuary and why you cannot just leave it to technology to find fairness.
I won’t explain the final detail as we have put the three of us under NDA. But I can say that a very large part of our conversation was about doing what was and is right in the eyes of an unseen but felt force. It does not surprise me that Chris, Derek and I found ourselves talking about religion.
Agentic AI was a step too far for the two actuaries I was with. Did I sense they were considering AI devaluing their human judgement? I suspect that they are like any other senior decision makers , believing they still know best. And so long as we have churches, we will have places to celebrate the human conscience and the superhuman force that governs it.