It's okay to build simple agents. They just need the right governance.
You don't need every agent to be a Type 3. You need a governance hierarchy where simpler agents are supervised by smarter ones, all the way up to humans.
This is how you scale AI while maintaining civilizational coherence.
The root of the hierarchy. Provide values, resolve edge cases, maintain veto authority.
Aggregate values → Feed CIRIS Scoring → Drive early warning systems
Run IDMA. Track k, ρ, k_eff. Detect correlation-driven failures before they cascade.
The "circuit breakers" — they see what Type 1 and Type 2 can't
Follow ethical rules. Auditable. Can't detect echo chambers on their own.
Supervisors for Type 1 — enforce boundaries, escalate uncertainty
Single-purpose tools. Fast, cheap, narrowly scoped. No ethical framework of their own.
Perfectly fine when properly governed — most agents will be here
Values are power. Work is the result. The hierarchy transforms one into the other safely.
⚡
Power Plant
Humans
Generate values
🏭
Substation
Type 3
Transform, monitor, isolate
🔌
Distribution
Type 2
Deliver with breakers
💡
Devices
Type 1
Do work
Transforms high-level human values into agent-level directives. Monitors for faults via IDMA. Isolates sections when correlation spikes (circuit breaker). Smooths fluctuations so downstream agents get stable input (capacitor).
Delivers power (values) to end devices. Has circuit breakers that trip on overload — when a Type 1 agent tries something outside bounds, Type 2 cuts the connection and escalates.
Like a surge protector: Type 3 absorbs the shock (detects correlation spikes), Type 2 trips the breaker (enforces boundaries). Neither works alone — together they buffer humans from the raw chaos of millions of Type 1 agents doing work.
You can deploy millions of Type 1 agents for narrow tasks. They don't need to be smart or ethical — they just need to be governed by agents that are.
Type 3 agents are expensive (they run IDMA on every decision). But you only need ~10% of them to stabilize the federation. The other 90% can be cheap Type 1 and Type 2 agents.
Humans set values at the top. Type 3 agents translate those into correlation-aware governance. Type 2 agents enforce rules. Type 1 agents execute tasks. Values propagate through the hierarchy.
Each layer reports k, ρ, k_eff upward. Type 3 agents aggregate these into regional fragility scores. Humans see the seismograph and can intervene before collapse.
A stable federation might look like:
80%
Type 1
10%
Type 2
10%
Type 3
The exact ratios depend on the domain. High-stakes domains need more Type 3 coverage. Low-stakes automation can tolerate more Type 1.
This isn't just about individual agents behaving well. It's about the aggregate — the whole ecosystem of AI agents maintaining coherence with human values at scale.
The feedback loop: Humans provide values → Type 3 agents monitor for correlation drift → CIRIS Scoring aggregates fragility signals → Early warning systems alert humans → Humans adjust values. The loop closes.
Without this loop, AI deployment becomes a one-way street: deploy agents, hope they don't drift, react when things break. With it, you get continuous monitoring and course correction. That's the difference between fragility and resilience at civilizational scale.
The federation model means you don't have to solve alignment for every agent.
You solve it for the governance layer, and let structure do the rest.