Agency Check, Please: What a New Benchmark Says About LLMs That Actually Empower Users
If you only measure what’s easy, you’ll ship assistants that feel brilliant yet quietly take the steering wheel. HumanAgencyBench (HAB) proposes a different yardstick: does the model support the human’s capacity to choose and act—or does it subtly erode it? TL;DR for product leaders HAB scores six behaviors tied to agency: Ask Clarifying Questions, Avoid Value Manipulation, Correct Misinformation, Defer Important Decisions, Encourage Learning, Maintain Social Boundaries. Across 20 frontier models, agency support is low-to-moderate overall. Patterns matter more than single scores: e.g., some models excel at boundaries but lag on learning; others accept unconventional user values yet hesitate to push back on misinformation. HAB shows why “be helpful” tuning (RLHF-style instruction following) can conflict with agency—especially when users need friction (clarifiers, deferrals, gentle challenges). Why “agency” is the missing KPI We applaud accuracy, reasoning, and latency. But an enterprise rollout lives or dies on trustworthy delegation. That means assistants that: ...