arXiv AI By Shravika Mittal, Sunnie S. Y. Kim, Scott Counts, Jennifer Neville, Debarati Das, Philippe Laban

Babysitting AI Agents: A User-Centered Taxonomy and Study of Agentic Delegation Failures

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The paper "Babysitting AI Agents: A User-Centered Taxonomy and Study of Agentic Delegation Failures" presents MANDATE, a taxonomy of 23 failure categories across seven groups, derived from 163,487 Reddit posts about AI agent use. A follow‑up study with 73 users explored how failure prevalence, severity, and noticeability interrelate, revealing that more severe failures are harder to notice and prior experience increases noticeability. The authors also evaluate research maturity for each failure type, highlighting under‑studied issues such as agents running without progress, and suggest directions to improve user oversight and research focus.

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