Library.Reference:9.3.6 - Assistant, teammate, principal and agent describe different relations

An assistant helps with another participant’s work. A teammate contributes within a joint undertaking. These descriptions can apply to the same participant. Neither label fixes initiative, expertise, permission, dependence, accountability or the right to change a Method.

Principal–agent analysis addresses a delegated relation in which interests, information and incentives can differ. Collaboration toward a common purpose does not remove that relation, and a contract does not exhaust the team’s joint practice. An AI can be a delegate for one operation and a delegator for another. Identify the actual parties, the authority they can transfer and the responsibility for the combined result.

Use a concrete undertaking. Who requests which result? Who accepts which work? What inputs and conditions are promised by the requester? Who can judge completion, permit a change, cancel, dispute or continue? What happens to already incurred effort and outside effects? A technical acknowledgement is evidence of a protocol event; establish what commitment that event actually represents in this arrangement.

Dietz and Mulder distinguish production from coordination, request from promise and declaration from acceptance. In their human account, feasibility problems can lead to discussion of the product or timing, while challenged grounds of rightness or sincerity lead to discourse. These distinctions help locate a disagreement. Their premise of free human coordination cannot simply be assumed in relations of dependence or mapped unchanged onto a technical agent.

For an AI participant, establish whether it acts within an accepted organizational undertaking, is authorized to make a bounded commitment through a protocol, or merely proposes a continuation for an authorized party. Name the party or organization responsible for the relevant consequence. This preserves useful technical agency without inferring human social or legal status from fluent dialogue.

Apply reciprocal scrutiny. A delegate may conceal missing capability, misuse access or substitute its own easier target. A principal may make an infeasible demand, withhold agreed conditions, move the acceptance criterion or exploit dependence. The recipient of help may be harmed by a sponsor’s objective; the helper may be pressured to certify an unsupported success. Preserve an evidence-based objection and return the contested authority or condition to the appropriate decision.

A justified objection, an honest mistake, a technical failure and opportunism require different responses. First identify the disputed proposition, promised act or observed action. Correct a false fact, repair an unavailable means, renegotiate a feasible undertaking or obtain a competent ruling on the contested ground. A performance failure alone does not prove intent. An agent’s explanation of its intent does not settle the causal question.

Revision also has a history. The 2024 second edition of Enterprise Ontology explicitly includes reconsidering earlier decline and reject acts. Agreement on a return in the coordination process does not erase production costs or other effects. The practical continuation must account for those facts, including a separate compensating undertaking where appropriate. “Reset the task” is not an adequate model of every relationship.