AI engineering glossary · Evals guardrails AI security
What is excessive agency?
Excessive agency: An OWASP-listed risk where an AI system is given more tools, permissions or autonomy than its task needs, so a mistake or an injected instruction can cause real damage. The remedy is to limit functions, scope permissions and require human approval for risky actions.
Excessive agency: an example
An email assistant with permission to send and delete mail is tricked by a message into deleting an inbox.
Related terms
More Evals guardrails AI security terms
- Extrinsic hallucination
- Fast Gradient Sign Method
- G-Eval
- Garak
- Greedy Coordinate Gradient
- Groundedness
- Guardrail
- Guardrails AI
Where you learn it
Excessive agency is part of the AI Engineering Program, which teaches it with notes, a hands-on lab and an exam. The first lesson is free.