{"slug": "being-actually-agentic", "title": "being actually agentic", "summary": "A writer argues that 'agency' is often overcomplicated and provides a simple four-step framework for being agentic: noticing a useful task, recognizing no one else is doing it, deciding to act, and executing. The author cites personal examples such as starting an AI alignment group at Caltech despite not being a student there.", "body_md": "people overcomplicate or mythicize \"agency\" -- that's bad for the world, so I idiot-proofed it:\n\nbeing agentic looks like:\n\nnoticing “Someone should really do this (very useful) thing”\n\nnoticing “Hmm no one’s doing it / Do I know someone else who could do this?”\n\n“I can do something about it!”\n\n“I go do it / I did it! click here to see my learnings.”\n\nrinse and repeat.get your reps in.\n\nevery hour, every quarter, every chapter of your life.\n\nsomeone described as “high agency” just does this at a higher frequency / intensity, or harder problem-selection.\n\n~~~\n\nthat’s it.\n\nstop waiting for all the traffic lights to turn green, you can just do things, get your reps in.\n\nfor example, teach someone for 3mins what it would take them 3hrs.\n\nfor example, proactively taking pictures when the event organizers are too busy, anticipating pictures are useful.\n\nfor example, noticing there’s no AGI-preparedness university group in your school and inserting yourself to start one.\n\nfor example, proactively starting a better vegan protein-bar company because most protein bars suck.\n\nfor example, noticing not enough people are communicating about risks from advanced AI so you hit record and make videos that explain AI security gaps.\n\nthis is battle-tested myself btw / there’s skin-in-the-game to my 4-step plan:\n\nthat’s how i started Caltech AI Alignment without being a caltech student.", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/being-actually-agentic", "canonical_source": "https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/yc645PeuYsX2E2NDT/being-actually-agentic", "published_at": "2026-07-15 00:25:08+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-07-15 00:28:55.445631+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["ai-safety", "ai-policy"], "entities": ["Caltech"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/being-actually-agentic", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/being-actually-agentic.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/being-actually-agentic.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/being-actually-agentic.jsonld"}}