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Safer Agentic AI

Principles and Responsible Practices

Learn how to manage the risks and opportunities of agentic AI with this practical guide to ensuring the safe and beneficial developments of advanced AI systems.

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EAN: 9781398625433

Edition: 1

Published: 03 Jan 2026

Format: 234 x 156

336 pages

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About the book

Implement advanced and agentic AI with confidence, control and strategic foresight.

Safer Agentic AI is a guide for senior technology and business professionals who must deploy the most advanced AI systems in ways that accelerate innovation while preventing critical business, ethical and societal risks. Written by AI ethics and safety experts Nell Watson and Ali Hessami, this book shows senior professionals how to harness agentic and autonomous AI responsibly, ensuring systems remain aligned with organizational values, strategic objectives and human oversight.

Combining technical insight with practical governance, it equips leaders to assess capability, anticipate emerging risks and design controls that enable safe adoption at scale.

You'll learn how to:
- Align agentic AI systems with business goals, values and long-term strategy
- Strengthen transparency, governance and oversight across increasingly autonomous workflows
- Maintain meaningful human control over high-impact systems and decisions
- Apply practical frameworks for risk management, value alignment and ethical safeguards

With clear explanations and actionable tools, Safer Agentic AI helps senior leaders deploy advanced AI that enhances productivity, protects organizational integrity and positions the business to innovate confidently and responsibly.

Themes include: AI governance, agentic AI, risk management, value alignment, transparency, ethical AI, organizational resilience, advanced AI

About the authors

Nell Watson is a researcher and applied tech ethicist. She advises organizations on their machine learning strategies, specializing in AI research and ethical advocacy. She is President of the European Responsible AI Office and the author of Taming the Machine published by Kogan Page. She lives in Belfast, UK.

Ali Hessami is a systems engineer specializing in risk analysis, assessment and safety. He is Vice Chair of the IEEE AI Ethics Certification Programme and Chair of the IEEE 7000 AI Ethics Standard. He lives in London, UK.

Nell Watson

Ali Hessami

- Chapter - 00: Introduction;
Section - ONE: The dawn of agency;
- Chapter - 01: AI overview;
Section - 02: The age of agentic AI;
Section - TWO: The core alignment problem;
Section - 03: Goal alignment of agentic AI systems;
- Chapter - 04: Value alignment and embedding ethics;
- Chapter - 05: Deceptive and power-seeking AI;
- Chapter - 06: Utility convergence;
Section - THREE: The governance and safety toolkit;
- Chapter - 07: Safety fundamentals;
- Chapter - 08: Security and guardrails;
- Chapter - 09: Agentic conflict;
- Chapter - 10: Transparency and interpretability;
- Chapter - 11: AI governance;
- Chapter - 12: Weighted capability governance;
Section - FOUR: The human and societal interface;
- Chapter - 13: Working with agentic AI;
- Chapter - 14: Psychosecurity;
- Chapter - 15: Who goes there?;
- Chapter - 16: Self-watching machines;
- Chapter - 17: Sustainability and resource stewardship;
Section - FIVE: The uncharted frontier;
- Chapter - 18: Disruptive waves;
- Chapter - 19: Frontier concerns;
- Chapter - 20: Superintelligence strategy;
- Chapter - 21: Ten principles for a positive future;
- Chapter - 22: Further resources;
- Chapter - 23: Glossary;

Reviews

David D Luxton, Affiliate Professor, University of Washington School of Medicine

Nell Watson and Ali Hessami's new book is just in time, offering the actionable guidance we must have to ensure AI truly aligns with human values.

Keeley A Crockett, Professor in Computational Intelligence, Manchester Metropolitan University

This book is an essential read for those seeking to safeguard humanity's future in the age of AI, serving as a reminder that we all are stewards and have a significant role to play. The book provides practical action items for agentic AI safety, combining ethical insight with governance strategies to help organizations harness agentic AI responsibly and effectively.

Thijs Pepping, philosopher of technology, SogetiLabs and co-author of Real Fake

With clarity and courage, Nell Watson and Ali Hessami expose how AI shapes our minds, organizations and planet and how we must build the guardrails to keep it serving life, not running it.

Roman Yampolskiy, author of AI: Unexplainable, Unpredictable, Uncontrollable

Safer Agentic AI advances a pragmatic control architecture by regulating agents by what they can actually do. Imposing measurable safety gates on plans, tools, and autonomy, Nell Watson and Ali Hessami turn alignment from aspiration into auditable engineering.

Kris Østergaard, author of Transforming Legacy Organizations

Agentic AI can bring humanity into a better future - if it is governed responsibly. I can think of no one better than Nell Watson and Ali Hessami to guide us all on that crucial journey.

Scott L David, Executive Director, Information Risk and Synthetic Intelligence Research Initiative, University of Washington

Nell Watson and Ali Hessami have produced a guide for safely and ethically engaging with agentic AI. This work presents clear descriptions of many of the ways in which human and computational intelligences interact. The authors' approach performs a vital service for both information professionals and concerned citizens alike when they discuss these once-obscure and subtle aspects of intelligence and interactions. In doing so, they reveal points of intervention to help humans and organizations to more successfully, safely and ethically engage with computationally intelligent systems.

John A McDermid, Lloyd’s Register Foundation Chair in Safety, University of York

Nell Watson and Ali Hessami address the potential risks of agentic AI. The authors provide an overview of the concepts and principles of this fast-moving technology and consider the key issues, such as how to align the behaviour of agents with human goals and values. They specifically address the topics of safety, security and ethics in the context of AI and other important aspects of controlling and governing agentic AI. The work is timely and thought provoking; without the approaches they advocate there is a risk that the development of agentic AI will outpace the community's ability to ensure positive outcomes from its use.

Koen Holtman, co-founder, AI Standards Lab

Safer Agentic AI charts the many failure modes of current agentic AI technology, as well as potential future developments that will have to be taken into account, if we want to keep AI agents safe. This book does not limit itself to technical problems alone: it also identifies the ethical questions and coordination challenges we will need to urgently resolve, if we want to build a future where powerful AI agents create societally beneficial outcomes. It provides actionable recommendations for AI researchers, AI agent designers and policy makers alike.

Nell Watson and Ali Hessami's new book is just in time, offering the actionable guidance we must have to ensure AI truly aligns with human values.
David D Luxton, Affiliate Professor, University of Washington School of Medicine

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