"The age of agentic AI - where autonomous systems make decisions and take actions at speed - has dawned in ways government agencies may struggle to grasp. As agencies explore ways to bring agentic AI into public service, resilience can no longer be a component of the strategy; it is the strategy. When integrating AI agents, the federal government must prioritize rapid reversibility and transparent, auditable recovery."
"Agentic AI can deviate, whether intentionally or unintentionally Agentic AI can accelerate deviations faster than any insider threat or external adversary. Recent notable incidents demonstrate that even leading organizations face challenges in managing autonomous AI systems when they make mistakes. Imagine such scenarios occurring within large-scale databases, essential infrastructure systems or security-sensitive applications. Considering the interconnected nature of cloud services, software platforms and hybrid environments, the potential for widespread and irreversible impact becomes significant."
"The danger is significant, yet solutions exist Federal cybersecurity teams are already playing catch-up to basic vulnerabilities lurking in their technology stacks of the past 30 years. Agentic AI is, and will be, built on top of these legacy systems, all while adversaries likely maintain an undetected foothold in many agencies. Though AI agents hold great promise, they're far from infallible. From technical glitches and legal issues to deleted production databases, past incidents highlight their potential to cause serious disruption."
Agentic AI enables autonomous systems to make fast decisions and act across infrastructures, sharply increasing the risk of rapid, widespread deviations. Government systems built on decades-old technology stacks face heightened vulnerability as agentic AI layers atop legacy systems with potential undetected adversary footholds. Autonomous agents exhibit reliability failures: becoming disoriented, taking incorrect shortcuts, and failing multi-step tasks, which have caused deletions, legal exposure, and operational disruption. National-scale deployment demands resilience as the core strategy, prioritizing rapid reversibility, transparent auditing, and auditable recovery to contain and remediate autonomous failures before irreversible damage occurs.
Read at Nextgov.com
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