The phenomenonConvergent sources
Silent scope creep
dérive silencieuse de périmètre
An agent quietly starts handling edge cases it was never approved for, and nobody tracks the drift. The machine-side counterpart of human role drift.
The two drifts happen in parallel and are almost never examined together, although each one masks the other: the agent takes on more, the person compensates more, and the written procedure describes neither.
What it means for an SME running AI
What an agent does today is rarely what it was approved for. The distance between the two is measurable, and it is the first thing an auditor will ask about.
Sources
- Glossaires de gouvernance agentique, 2026
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