The Agent Self-Correction Trap

Senior AI Engineer interview at Google, and the interviewer asks:

“Your research agent produced a full analysis report for $10. A PhD analyst needed 16 hours and $1,000 for the same work. The agent made one mistake: a single mis-pasted number. Your teammate suggests running it 5 times (still 20× cheaper) or having it re-read its own draft and self-correct. Will either one catch the error? What would you build instead?”

Don’t say: “Run it 5 times and take the majority vote. Self-consistency improves accuracy.”