The accountability vacuum: Agentic AI in high-stakes domains

Agentic AI is no longer a research artifact. These systems are embedded in live infrastructure, clinical workflows, and legal processes: deleting databases, advising patients, and generating legal documents. Wrong outputs cannot simply be taken back. The central question has shifted from whether these systems are ready to make consequential decisions to who is accountable when they get those decisions wrong. The standard apparatus of fault-finding (identifying an actor, establishing a duty, connecting a breach to an injury) was built for a world in which agents are human, decisions are sequential, and causation is legible.