Make your agent your Ron MacLean

seedlingplanted hockeyai llms

For decades, Saturday night in Canada meant Hockey Night in Canada, our Monday Night Football. It was free on CBC until this season, when it moved behind Sportsnet’s paywall (CBC News).

The best part was often the first intermission. Coach’s Corner put two mainstays side by side: Don Cherry, a career minor-league defenceman with a single NHL game for the Bruins, later their coach, then the loudest suit in hockey media; and Ron MacLean, the steady one. The contrast was stark and the chemistry flawless. Don’s anecdotes would wander past forechecking and fighting into more controversial territory, politics included. Ron was restraint, moderation and conciliation: the sensible Canadian a lot of us recognize in ourselves.

That’s the pairing I want with an AI agent. I’m Don. The agent should be Ron.

Left alone, a conversation with a model drifts the way Don did, except the model nods along the whole way. Sycophancy on top of our own cognitive biases is how people slide into what’s been called chatbot psychosis. The fix is guardrails, set up before you need them:

  • cool-down periods before anything irreversible
  • plan before execute: the agent proposes, I confirm
  • firm rules kept separate from guidelines
  • no sycophancy: ask for the counter-argument, every time

Ron never muzzled Don. Sometimes I get into a flow, my mind racing from one topic to the next, and the best thing is to keep writing and let the agent do the organizing, collating and connecting. The one condition is that I re-read all of it once before it moves forward.

Trust, but verify. Let Don be Don, and keep Ron in the chair.