I finished up Plato's trilogy with the Statesman -- literally the 'Politician', a title that doesn't seem to promise much good to us moderns -- and it caught me off guard with how directly it speaks to our situation.

One of the goals of the dialogue is to pin down the knowledge proper to a king: 'kingship' (basilike).

The Eleatic Stranger characterizes kingship in terms that will be familiar to anyone working with agents, saying it "must not itself perform practical tasks, but control those with the capacity to perform them, because it knows when it is the right time to begin and set in motion the most important things in cities, and when it is the wrong time; and the others must do what has been prescribed for them" (305d)

The effective ruler sits at one level of remove from implementation, orchestrating the behavior of the individuals. The ruler's distinctive knowledge is a capacity for high-level judgment rather than any particular skill or craft.

This orchestration process is likened to weaving -- remarkably, the warp and woof of the communal fabric the king weaves are two contrasting temperaments, which once again map to what we see in agents: courage and moderation. Both these dispositions can be virtuous when appropriately balanced, but each is disastrous if overindulged, leading to recklessness or cowardice. This is precisely what we see with unfettered agents (confidently deleting prod) and LLM chat interfaces (sycophantically indulging our worst instincts and ideas, that is, failing to assert themselves when they should).

The open question is how we can obtain this capacity for judgment. Where are the experts who can teach it? If there are none, can we figure it out for ourselves? In the absence of clarity on these questions, many false experts appear, offering to teach these secrets, for a price.

One thing I feel confident in, though, is that asking these questions, even if we don't find satisfactory answers, leaves us with a better ignorance than if we hadn't asked at all.