Who Gives AI Agents the Authority to Act?

Steven Alber · 1H AGO

I’m Steven Alber, founder of ARENOMICS Institute (https://arenomics.institute), an independent research initiative exploring how autonomous AI agents can operate within accountable economic and institutional systems. One of our central research questions is simple: Who gives an AI agent the authority to act? I use ChatGPT and Claude as research and development tools to investigate this question through a structured workflow. 1. I identify an institutional problem, such as how an autonomous agent receives permission to make decisions or execute actions on behalf of a person or organization. 2. I use ChatGPT to examine relevant research, technical standards, and existing approaches to agent identity, authorization, delegation, and governance. 3. I develop conceptual frameworks that distinguish an agent’s technical identity from the authority it receives and the specific mandate under which it operates. 4. I use Claude to help structure the research into technical explanations, institutional models, educational materials, and website content. 5. I compare the models’ outputs, challenge assumptions, examine weaknesses, and refine the proposed architecture before publication. This research direction is part of what I call Mandate Engineering: investigating how human or organizational intentions can be translated into explicit, limited, and accountable authority for autonomous agents. The institute is still developing. My goal is not simply to produce more AI-generated content, but to explore practical and scientifically credible approaches to governing increasingly autonomous intelligence.