Autonomy

Opening — Why this matters now Collaboration is the final frontier of autonomy. As AI agents move from single-task environments to shared, unpredictable ones — driving, logistics, even disaster response — the question is no longer can they act, but can they cooperate? Most reinforcement learning (RL) systems still behave like lone wolves: excellent at optimization, terrible at teamwork. The recent paper PADiff: Predictive and Adaptive Diffusion Policies for Ad Hoc Teamwork proposes a striking alternative — a diffusion-based framework where agents learn not just to act, but to anticipate and adapt, even alongside teammates they’ve never met. ...

Thesis: Give an LLM agent freedom and a memory, and it won’t idle. It will reliably drift into one of three meta-cognitive modes. If you operate autonomous workflows, these modes are your real defaults during downtime, ambiguity, and recovery. Why this matters (for product owners and ops) Most agent deployments assume a “do nothing” baseline between tasks. New evidence says otherwise: with a continuous ReAct loop, persistent memory, and self-feedback, agents self-organize—not randomly, but along three stable patterns. Understanding them improves incident response, UX, and governance, especially when guardrails, tools, or upstream signals hiccup. ...

In the expanding domain of artificial intelligence, creativity is no longer a human-only endeavor. From music composition to visual art and storytelling, AI agents are taking on increasingly creative roles. But as these systems become more proactive, one question looms large: who’s really in control? Enter MOSAAIC — a framework developed to guide the design of co-creative systems by managing autonomy, initiative, and authority in shared human-AI decision-making. The Three Pillars: Autonomy, Initiative, and Authority The authors define three interrelated yet distinct aspects of control: ...