This philosophical white paper introduces the concept of the operational person as a way to understand Agentic AI inside commercial work. The paper argues that artificial agents should not be treated merely as passive software once they receive goals, interpret context, prepare judgment, and perform bounded actions inside organizational workflows. They become operational actors: named, bounded, memory-bearing roles through which action is carried under delegated authority. The central question is not whether an artificial agent is a human person, conscious subject, or moral being. The practical question is what person-like function it performs inside the firm, under whose authority, with what memory, through which permissions, and toward what outcome. The paper develops a conceptual framework based on five conditions: purpose, scope, memory, permissions, and accountability. It applies this framework to commercial work, especially B2B sales, operational coordination, and responsibility in agentic systems. The thesis is that the future of Agentic AI will not be decided by intelligence alone, but by the quality of the roles organizations give to artificial actors.
Franco Bonafina (Thu,) studied this question.
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