Why validity beats scale when building multi‑step AI systems

Why validity beats scale when building multi‑step AI systems

From The AI Fundamentalists by Dr. Andrew Clark & Dr. Sid Mangalik

January 6, 2026 · 40 min · Season 1 · Episode 40

About this episode

The episode discusses the importance of validity over scale in building effective multi-step AI systems with insights from a research paper.

In this episode, Dr. Sebastian (Seb) Benthall joins us to discuss research from his and Andrew's paper entitled “Validity Is What You Need” for agentic AI that actually works in the real world. Our discussion connects systems engineering, mechanism design, and requirements to multi‑step AI that creates enterprise impact to achieve measurable outcomes. Defining agentic AI beyond LLM hypeLimits of scale and the need for multi‑step controlTool use, compounding errors, and guardrailsSystems...

People in this episode

Hosts: Dr. Andrew Clark, Dr. Sid Mangalik

Guest: Dr. Sebastian (Seb) Benthall

Topics covered

  • agentic AI
  • multi-step AI systems
  • systems engineering
  • mechanism design
  • enterprise impact

Keywords

  • agentic AI
  • multi-step control
  • enterprise impact
  • systems engineering
  • mechanism design

Mentioned in this episode

Books & works: Validity Is What You Need

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