Safety Guardrails Without Blocking Value

Over-strict safety kills adoption

Heavy-handed content filters block legitimate use cases.

Users circumvent restrictions, leading to worse outcomes.

Graceful degradation

Use soft guardrails: warn, suggest alternatives, log for review.

Hard blocks only for truly dangerous situations (fraud, phishing).

Let humans override with audit trail.

Framework

Implement policy as composable rules in policy engine (e.g., Open Policy Agent).

Measure false positive and false negative rates.

Iterate with domain experts and user feedback.