AESP: A Human-Sovereign Economic Protocol for AI Agents with Privacy-Preserving Settlement

Researchers have developed the Agent Economic Sovereignty Protocol (AESP), a new framework that allows AI agents to conduct autonomous financial transactions at machine speed while maintaining human control and governance boundaries. The protocol uses five key mechanisms including policy engines, human oversight, dual-signed commitments, privacy preservation, and cryptographic substrates to ensure agents remain economically capable but never fully sovereign.