AI Governance Engineer
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Autonomy level

By Updated

How far an agent acts without a person between its steps, set by the deployer as a design decision rather than taken as a property of the model; one research scale names five levels by the user's role, from operator to observer 1. It is a registry field tied to a minimum control set, and raising it is a reviewed change.

Developed in
ch. 23, Autonomy is a design decision
Chapters
ch. 15, Deployment · ch. 17, Incidents · ch. 23, AI Agents
Contrast with
Autonomy
Source
1 numbered reference, listed below

Where it is used

3 chapters of the Body of Knowledge use the term. Each link opens the first section that does.

  • Deployer

    Under the EU AI Act, whoever uses an AI system under its own authority, other than in a purely personal, non-professional activity.

Sources

  1. [1] "Levels of Autonomy for AI Agents" (K. J. Kevin Feng, David W. McDonald, Amy X. Zhang; arXiv 2506.12469; autonomy as a deliberate design decision separate from capability and operational environment; five levels by user role: operator, collaborator, consultant, approver, observer). arXiv. 2025-06-14 (v2 2025-07-28). https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.12469 (verified: primary)

Definitions of legal terms paraphrase the cited text, which governs. Dated statements are as of .

Cite this term

García Aibar, J. (2026). Autonomy level. In AI Governance Engineering: The Thesis & Body of Knowledge (v0.5.0), Glossary. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22956197. https://aigovernanceengineer.com/glossary/autonomy-level. CC BY 4.0

BibTeX

@misc{aige2026autonomylevel,
  author  = {Jorge García Aibar},
  title   = {{Autonomy level}},
  note    = {Glossary, AI Governance Engineering: The Thesis \& Body of Knowledge, version 0.5.0},
  year    = {2026},
  doi     = {10.5281/zenodo.22956197},
  url     = {https://aigovernanceengineer.com/glossary/autonomy-level}
}