FIELD NOTE / TIKTOK
Three AIs agree. The customer condition is gone.
The complete written thought and the evidence behind it. The video edition will follow its public release.
The written argument is here.
This approved TikTok edition is on the journal now. Its video player and original platform link will appear after each public release is verified.
Three AIs agree. The customer condition is gone.
Video caption
Three AIs agree. The customer condition is gone. The damaging error is a missing qualifier. Do this because agreement on a paraphrase is not approval. #EricFieldNotes
Full written post / accessibility read
Fictional customer pilot: sales asks AI for a plan, management asks AI for the short version, and engineering asks AI to create tasks. By the time code is written, the task says launch the feature. The original security condition vanished.
The first note says ninety-day pilot, subject to review before external data enters. The next version retains the pilot but drops the clause. The last agent implements exactly what it received. That obedience is what makes the failure subtle.
Give the downstream agent only its task and handoff packet. Ask it to identify the source, customer scope and required prior review. If it cannot, the packet is inadequate. Do not fix this by merely asking it to be careful.
Keep the signed source and owner on the execution path. A summary can help people understand; it cannot silently become permission. If the final action cannot cite the original condition, stop before deployment.
#EricFieldNotes
Four-beat scene transcript
1. Three AIs agree. The customer condition is gone.
Fictional customer pilot: sales asks AI for a plan, management asks AI for the short version, and engineering asks AI to create tasks. By the time code is written, the task says launch the feature. The original security condition vanished.
Visual: The original approval said subject to review.
2. No agent has to invent a fact.
The first note says ninety-day pilot, subject to review before external data enters. The next version retains the pilot but drops the clause. The last agent implements exactly what it received. That obedience is what makes the failure subtle.
Visual: The damaging error is a missing qualifier.
3. Run the reverse question.
Give the downstream agent only its task and handoff packet. Ask it to identify the source, customer scope and required prior review. If it cannot, the packet is inadequate. Do not fix this by merely asking it to be careful.
Visual: Can the final agent recover the original condition?
4. Bind the source to action.
Keep the signed source and owner on the execution path. A summary can help people understand; it cannot silently become permission. If the final action cannot cite the original condition, stop before deployment.
Visual: Do this because agreement on a paraphrase is not approval.
Research and claim limits
- Mohamed et al., LLM as a Broken Telephone, ACL 2025 (S167)
- Perez et al., When LLMs Play the Telephone Game, ICLR 2025 (S168)
- NIST AI RMF 1.0 (S171)
The examples identified as illustrative or simulated are design probes, not reported incidents. Vendor specifications do not establish workload performance.