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Building the Foundation for the Agentic AI Era

45m 12s

Building the Foundation for the Agentic AI Era

Angie Jones, Vice President of the Agentic AI Foundation, shares her journey from engineering leadership at companies like Block and Twitter to founding a collaborative, open-source initiative focused on agentic AI. Her work at Block exposed her to the transformative potential of AI agents, leading to a pivotal realization: organizations need structured education and change management to adopt these tools effectively. She emphasizes that success lies not in overwhelming teams with technology, but in identifying where human expertise still excels and delegating the rest to AI. This approach, which includes training “champions” from diverse teams to share proven practices, fosters trust and reduces resistance. The Agentic AI Foundation, formed in late 2025, brings together key players like OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and Block to co-develop critical standards—such as MCP (for agent-tool connectivity), A2A (agent-to-agent coordination), and Agent Gateway (for runtime control)—in a neutral, global environment. These standards enable interoperability, scalability, and security across enterprises. Crucially, the foundation operates at high velocity, driven by active, incentivized working groups where industry leaders collaborate openly despite being competitors. This rapid, real-world innovation contrasts with traditional foundation timelines. Angie highlights that while AI agents are now being deployed at massive scale—sometimes involving millions of agents—common challenges remain in scalability and governance. Looking ahead, she envisions AI becoming a daily tool for everyday users, much like mobile internet, but stresses the importance of maintaining a balanced human-AI partnership where AI augments, rather than replaces, human judgment. The foundation’s mission is not just to build standards, but to ensure global, equitable, and ethical AI adoption across cultures and industries.

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Welcome to the Practical AI Podcast, where we break down the real-world applications of artificial intelligence and how it's shaping the way we live, work, and create. Our goal is to help make AI technology, practical, productive, and accessible to everyone, whether you're a developer, business leader, or just curious about the tech behind the buzz, you're in the right place. Be sure to connect with us on LinkedIn, X, or Blue Sky to stay up-to-date with episode drops, behind the scenes content, and AI insights. You can learn more at practicalai.fm. Now, onto the show. Hey, welcome to another edition of the Practical AI Podcast. I am your co-host, going solo today, I'm Chris Benson, Daniel's not with me this time, but we have an excellent conversation coming up for you. With me today, I have Angie Jones, who is the Vice President of the Agentic AI Foundation, which I think is a super cool title to have at a super cool name place, and I'm really looking forward to finding out more about it. Angie, welcome to the show. Thanks so much, Chris. So, like I said, they're in the intro, and I said it before the show started and stuff. If somebody in AI was looking for a play like the Agentic, I mean, like, that is the coolest sounding thing you can have, but before we dive too far into the foundation, I'd really like to kind of hear, like, how does someone, like, how do you develop in your career? So that you end up doing that, like, could you tell us a little bit about your background? Because that's one of those things, if you wouldn't just said something to like, I work with tons of people working on Agentic AI, but like, leading the foundation, because I'm just curious, like, how do you get to that point? Yeah. So, I mean, I'm your traditional techie, so I've worked as an engineer for a couple of decades, so, you know, I've placed this like, IBM and Twitter, and the last role was at Block in Engineering Leadership Capacity, and so in that role, one of my tasks was to basically teach the entire company, 12,000 people how to use AI agents, and this is as I'm learning myself, because I mean, there's no book for it is, you know, right out the gate. And that was early, like, 2024, so a lot of this stuff was brand new, it was not even common in tech, let alone, in others' verticals, right? And so, I also like lead developer relations, and so a big part of my role is helping developers worldwide understand new technologies and how to use them. And so our company, Block, created like this internal AI agent, our name Goose, and Goose we were the developers were using Goose to like automate engineering tasks, help with coding and things like that, and so we were teaching developers across the globe, what is an AI agent? Like, we were very early in this, and so Jack Dorsey, who leads Block, was like, "Hey, Angie, you're teaching like everybody else about agents, I really would love for everyone in this company to learn how to use agents." And so I'm talking finance, marketing, like, you know, design, HR, everyone needed to learn about AI and more specifically how to utilize agents. And so, I remember the team went like really deep on this, and then it got to the point like pretty AI fluent company where everyone is comfortable using this. I needed to go really deep on the engineering org, and so that was my home. For engineers were using this, but we weren't seeing a big difference in like developer velocity for example, right? And so we explored that and learned that, you know, we're only at the tip of the iceberg. We really could do a whole lot more to get to this autonomous engineering org, right? And so I pretty much drank from the fire holes of like all of the news, all of the releases, something that's going out, and I consumed that kind of filter out a lot of the noise and then bring the things that are valuable to the engineers. And so I would say like I know a lot about this space, and also at my time at Block, it worked on a protocol. So this was like a cross-border money movement protocol. So those who don't know Block, that's the company, the finance tech company that houses square and cash app, right? So money is our jam. So I worked on this protocol, never thought I would be a protocol girl, but learned a lot about like just kind of open standards in how all of that works as well. Also really big and open source throughout my career. I've always believed in open source, contribute to open source, like advocate for it, right? So all of that kind of came together in this perfect storm as open AI andthropic and Block wanted to form a foundation for agentic AI. They understood that hey, some of these standards, some of these open source projects that we're coming up with, we probably shouldn't be the sole authors or owners of these things, right? MCP is a great example. So MCP is the model context protocol. This is what agents use to connect to applications and tools, right? Which we saw across Block, everyone in Block needed MCP service to connect to whatever applications they were using. And so like anthropic realize, yeah, this probably should live in a neutral home. And so those three companies came together to form the agentic foundation under the Linux foundation. The Linux foundation has been around for decades, everyone knows them. And so yeah, so this is a new foundation. So once we stood this up, me and our head of open source came over to the foundation and we thought it was so cool. We started working here full time. Very cool. And I like the Jack Dorsey name drop there that was, that's pretty good. So you actually, you were actually working directly with him as well along the way. Just kidding. Yeah, that's right. So I worked with Jack at Twitter and then he brought me over to Block when they started developing like these open source projects and protocol. Very cool. I want to back up for a moment because I got a couple of questions from things that you brought up there. And one is the education. Because I think educating the organizations that folks are in like, like you were, you know, path finding along the same kind of task that that a lot of organizations are trying to do right now. And that is, you know, especially like every year recently, but especially 2026 has been just insanely, you know, fast in terms of the, you know, the level of progress and the onset of agentics, you know, they were there last year, but this year it just has taken over the world. And so like every org is dealing with that now. And you have taken point on this notion of education, not just for developers, but for, you know, the whole org and kind of parts of the org that maybe people aren't thinking about as much because they tend to be very focused on developers. Can you talk a little bit about what creating that kind of change looks like in terms of, I, and I'm going to separate, I want to ask about the non-developers first, like when you're going into finance and you're going into these other, these other organizational departments that have, that are not thinking about the bits and bytes of AI all the time. And, and, and you're trying to say, here's a new tool. And like how do you approach that not only from the, the upskilling that's required, but also from the kind of the like getting people to accept it, because I mean, you know, you see like people out there, there's a lot of resistance to AI in the general population out there. And so like how, how do you navigate that when you're, when you're, when you're trying to, to move the org forward like that? Yeah, there, these were two very big and different challenges, right? So one is the whole change management of it all, like you're essentially asking people to think differently and do their jobs differently. These are experts in their domains, right, who, who maybe been doing this a couple of decades and you're like, oh, kind of throw away like your processes and everything. And we want you to do this. Not only that to your point, resistance, right, fear, lots of different emotions involved in that. And then the whole technical part of it where like these tools, like I said, this was very early on, 2024, 2025. You didn't have these nice desktop application. You had to see a lot, right? You were copying Jason to like get an MCP server working. Like this was foreign to folks who like don't use these tools every day. So it was a really big job in, and so like you have to consider all of that. It's not just, hey, let me show you how to use a terminal, right? helping them understand where they still fit into the process, right? But things, it's okay to let that go. Like you probably should not be doing this anymore because it's not a good use of your time anymore, right? And then also, I like to say there's people on both spectrums, there's people that, you know, they think AI is the best thing ever and can do all the things. And there's other people who are like, "Oh, AI is stupid, it can't do anything." I like to kind of be in the middle of there where, you know, I can be realistic about its strengths, its weaknesses, what I should use it for and what I shouldn't use it for. And just leading with that helps a lot because I'm not trying to get you to drink Kool-Aid, right? I'm saying, "Hey, here's a different approach that could speed you up, right?" That can also give you access to a lot of stuff that maybe you didn't have before and that car was the key. So when there's, let's say data, right? Everybody needs data. No matter where you're in. If I say, "Hey, listen, I can get you access with this agent and they're like some MCP server to let's say records that are in this database that you would have had to go to another team, put in a request and ask for a report, right?" And then try to figure that report out yourself. I can get you that data in seconds so that you can go and like do your best work. So people are like sold on that kind of thing, right? So you just take them step by step and give them things that are meaningful to them that might not be their core job. So just so they could get used to it and they could start building some trust, right? And then eventually they start delegating a little bit more and a little bit more until they find that right spot of, okay, I shouldn't delegate this. The AI does not do well with that. That part I'll take, right? So that was my overall approach to it. - I really like that. And when I know when I get in conversations with folks about this topic, one of the things that I often say, which I think is kind of resonating with your story there is that like find the place where the human has a distinct advantage from the AI and differentiate the AI, you know, go down through the job requirements and find what the human is still better at this point. And that may be fluid. That may change over time depending on that. So like having an open mind is good, but I think that's incredible advice that you're giving people in terms of like how to navigate because I think that's one of the biggest questions that people have out there based on the conversations I'm having to flip to the other side of the coin when you're dealing with developers and you're, and it has like, even as I'm a lifelong developer, I've been doing it for decades. And I see, you know, and I, you know, every day on social media and stuff, I see people, you see the developers that are embracing agentics fully and they're the orchestra. And then you see the ones that are like, oh, it's still sucks. And you know, I'm still, you know, all that stuff. And like, and what was your experience as you dived into the pool of developers trying to get the embrace going here? - So for a while, if we look back, so back then you're like, oh, this is great. But it wasn't that great, right? I mean, and they're in the early days, it was good for that time. But compared to now, it's not. And so developers who would like maybe try the tools and they didn't do a great job. You ask it to write a feature or something. It's like, what? This is stupid, you know? Those developers, I found once they tried it once, if it didn't work out well, they kind of threw their hands up. And it wasn't until, like, end of maybe 2025 when, like, was it four, like, Sonic, four, five or four, six, I don't even remember the versions anymore. But it was like this point in about November of 2025. - That was it, that was it. - The model was just really good. Well, we couldn't wait until then. Like, I had a mandate to like, okay, everybody used an AI and to increase developer velocity. And so what I did, think it back to that change management. And it was too much of a lift to get, it's 3500 developers to lift everyone at the same time. Especially we have all of these emotions involved and you have this resistance, right? And I would say, like, we had quite a few people who were resistant to this. So what I didn't stand, there's this rule. It's called the 190 rule. And this rule essentially says that in any community, there's gonna be 1% of that community that are creators. Think about, like, social media, anything like that. You'll have 9% that, you know, they'll dabble here and there, the tinkerers, if you will. And then the 90, the bulk of people are consumers, right? And so I said, if I look at our engineering organization through that lens, let me go and put together the one person. And so I went across the org and I pulled people and they didn't necessarily have to be the drunk off the Kool-Aid, like, AI-peeled people. But I just needed representation from every major repo that we had, you know, our largest ones, our critical ones. I wanted people from various teams, different types of repulsed as well. So I needed front-end and back-end and mobile, iOS, and Android. You know, I needed these people. And so I did this little week-long campaign just going across the org. These people don't necessarily, I'm not their first line manager, right? So I need to get buying from their first line manager. That's a totally different conversation because a lot of them weren't even bought into this, right? But I say, hey, listen, you know you have this mandate. You've got to get people to use AI on your team. Give me one person that I can have 30% of their time. And what I want to do is, one, they all come together. We learn all of this stuff, but it's not just for them. What I need them to do is build that knowledge back into the systems themselves so that your entire team benefits from this, right? And so, they were there with me. We're drinkers. It was 50 of them. Drinker from the fire holes, trying things out. Because things are changing so quickly. There's so much noise. You don't know what'll work, what won't work, right? Everything looks great on Twitter and a little demo. But we're working with huge, you know, mono-repos with, you know, hundreds of services in them. Like, you know, we're working with people's money. You know, these are enterprise systems that you have to approach this a bit differently and much more carefully. And so, they would try things out. We'll see things, we'll try them. Some things will work for maybe a specific type of repo. Like, okay, this works great on, well, sucks for mobile, right? We can't use that technique. But together, the 50 of us were able to like, try a lot of things, figure out what works. Maybe I do have something that works on my iOS repo. Hey, other iOS repos, here's what I figured out, right? And then, like I said, embed this stuff into the system. So things like context engineering techniques, things like, you know, agents MD files and agent skills and all of that baked into the repo. So that no matter who was pointing their agent at this repo, the agent could work the way that your team wanted it to work because it was baked into the system. So we didn't have to, you know, teach everybody how to do this. These champions essentially did that for them and filtered out the noise for their team. So they would bring back the things that actually work that are tried and true. And then they would do a brown bag session or something with their team. Like, let me show you guys what I put in the repo and why it's working for you, all of a sudden, you know? So that was the technique that we used there. And it worked really, really well. Sometimes as a business owner, it's so hard to put out quality material and content that looks handcrafted and human, but yet still use appropriate tools and automation and AI to make that fast to ship. That's why I appreciate so much what our partner Framer is doing. Framer is the pro website builder for creators, teams, and businesses that want a professional site and care enough to get every detail right. But that can't come at the price of endless to-do lists and long, long development processes. You need to make that happen fast, which is why Framer has integrated agents directly into their platform that work right alongside the teams creating the site. You can learn more about Framer and learn how to get more out of your site from a Framer specialist or get started building for free today at framer.com/practicalaos for 30% off a Framer pro annual plan. That's framer.com/practicalaos for 30% off Framer.com/practicalaos rules and restrictions may apply. So that is super cool. I'm going to borrow your techniques myself going via a bit of you other folks listening or watching will do the same. I'm really insightful there in terms of how to approach that. As you arrived, having gone through a lot of this and you arrive at the Agente K.I Foundation now, and you're kind of, it's brand new, it's an organization, you're standing it up, you're taking on the responsibilities, could you talk a bit about what was it like to get the foundation going and get it focused and get the right people and know that you were doing the things that needed and what those are. Yeah, so this Agente K.I Foundation was formed end of 2025, so it's been about eight or nine months at this point, lots of excitement, right? We had dozens of companies that were interested in being apart because everyone sees the need for this. This one is also innovating at lightning speed, there's so much innovation that's happening right now. And if you have anything that you're creating that's like, we don't have this figured out, we need a new standard for this, no one wants that standard being cooked in one kitchen, right? If we're talking about agente commerce, for example, PayPal doesn't want strike figuring that out by themselves, right? They want to work together or they need to work together and they know they need to work together. And so what the Agente K.I Foundation has done is provided this neutral home where all of these various companies can come and have these conversations together. So we have working groups essentially where the members, they, okay, which working group do you want to be a part of? And there's so many of them, there's like, like I said, the agente commerce, right? So if you're figuring out how agents are going to buy stuff on the web, all right, I need all, I need these, I need PayPal, I need Stripe, I need, you know, all of these various companies together and they work on these standards together. I like to think of it as they are defining the rules of the game and creating the game board together. And once they have that figured out, it's like, all right, now we can compete, deal, you know, deal me in, right? And so that's what the Agente K.I Foundation does. It also houses those standards or those projects. So right now the projects are MCP, Agents MD, Goose, Agent Gateway, and then also just this week, A2A, which is Google's agent to agent protocol has come into the foundation. And so these projects, now you have companies from all over contributing to these projects, right, or these standards, you then give it like, you know, more of a voice. If you, if you wanted to use one of these projects, but it lives in one of these companies, you might be a bit hesitant, right, as a company to build your products on top of this. If it lives with this one company, I don't know what they're going to do. I don't know if they'll like kill it, I don't know if they'll just, the roadmap will only reflect their goals, you know what I mean? And so this being a part of the Agente K.I Foundation gives it that confidence that, hey, this is in a neutral place, I now can build on top of this. And so that's what it looks like. We do a lot of education around the projects, the protocols, we throw conferences in all parts of the globe. And I'll say like one, one really cool aspect of this role. So in my last role, when deep on agents, but I'm also inside of my company, right, a little bit of open source, I'm consuming, but I'm still, my bubble is probably North America. Now this is a global foundation where my job is to pay attention to what is happening across the world. How are they adopting Agente K.I in Japan, in China, in Africa? You know what I mean? And so now I have this global perspective, which is absolutely fascinating. And part of the role is also to help these various countries come together on these standards and protocols and projects so that they're interoperable across the board. I'm curious. So that does sound super cool. I'm curious with that global perspective that you have developed in this role, like how do you assess? I think it's very easy for pretty much, I think it's easy for anyone kind of coming from their own perspective and their own little bubble that they're in to kind of assume I'm doing agentics and everybody else is doing it just like me or has the same needs and stuff like that. And so I think it's very easy to forget that diversity of location, diversity of life, all those things can change the user's need for that. And so do you have any any particular highlights from that global perspective on things, maybe that surprised you or that they caught your interest, I'd love to hear some of that. So I would say in places like China that are mobile first, right? The way they use technology is a bit different than us. So we're in North America, I would say a very like SASS heavy culture, whereas everything is like mobile over there. And so now like they, for example, they have a big need for a protocol like agent to agent where you need like this app to be able to talk to that app and they're both agentsic apps, right? And so they could like use that, like for example, like we chat, uses that, you know, with various agents and stuff like that. So that was really fascinating to me to just see like, oh, even the types of applications you're using, essentially influence like the types of tech that are standards or anything like that that you might need. And so that's just one example, yeah, that's that's cool. I'm curious. So and this is where I'm going to be selfish on my part. I'm as an engineer and a research scientist. I'm very focused on autonomy and you're and as you're getting into mobile and that's getting awfully close to, you know, thinking about edge concerns and stuff like that. And in embodied intelligence, you know, is is is such a hot area is certainly the area that I'm focused on and and you know, the the the rapid rise of robotics in all domains, you know, whether they're ground robots or flying things or whatever is is truly taking off like like it never has before, no pun intended there. I'm curious how with with this kind of and I think in some parts of the world, you see that more than others. I think in in China, Japan, and there are certain places where you're going to see a lot more robotics than you will in the US for US listeners or watchers, we don't have nearly as much of that here. That's right. And so like how does how when you're looking from from trying to to take these projects that the foundation has and you're looking at those different needs and you're seeing well, you know, the Americans and the Canadians and such, you know, kind of have one way of doing it and the Chinese and the Japanese and other, you know, like that may have a different way. How do you reckon because that's quite different, you know, in terms of how you're using agents in those ways and the way you're configuring it and the way you're constructing them and what their utility is, how do you how do you approach that when you're trying to make everybody happy with standards that are truly meant to be global? Yeah. That is why you need everyone at the table, right? And so if you only had like the your top like fainting companies in the US kind of determining all of this and there's no one from these other countries that hey, robotics is like a big deal here. We have to think about the physical applications as well, right? Then you miss that perspective, right? And not to say like they don't have places there, but you need leadership from those companies to also have a part in crafting the story, right? And so that's exactly like what the working groups do, like find your lane, get into it, you know, Europe is another good example. So they just rolled out the EU AI Act, right? And so that like is going to change the transparency that these systems has had. And that's global. If you're going to be serving anything to someone in Europe, then you have to be able to adhere to these these new legislations. And so that's another example where okay, I don't care what country you come from. You have to want to be aware this and to also help define how this should be done, right? There was a lot of backlash on how anthropic wrote this out, for example, right? And so we have a working group that is looking at are there some systems that we could build or some standards or something so that everyone doesn't have to reinvent this and figure out how they're going to do it, right? So then you have the voices from various countries together to figure this out and say okay, what if we did it this way? They haven't solved that yet, by the way. But that's an active group that's meeting regularly and by the way, all of these working groups are open. So anyone can join them. Just, you know, they have meetings, they're public, you could just like kind of go into it, see what they're talking about, even, you know, chiming with with thoughts of your own. But these folks meet and this is, you have one for security, you have one for identity, like, you know, any lane that you care about, there's there's someone there, like kind of working on this from across the globe. Yeah, I know, as a very specific to that, it was just a few days ago, then the philanthropic released their paper, along with the blog post on watermarking, so that you can detect, you know, AI generated content and all that, which was a fat and like, if, if we're, this is probably not the only episode that's going to come up, why not? I think we're, we're going to talk, we're going to probably do a deep dive on that very soon and hint. So, but that, that is one of those things that, you know, to your point, like affects everybody and, and there probably needs to be somewhat universal approaches to what, what is watermarking? How should it be applied? What should it be applied to? How do you, you know, how do you utilize that, both as the provider and as the consumer of that? Yeah, or do you even do watermarking or do you do a better way to do that? You know, that's right. That's right. So, I'm, I think, I'm starting to see lots and lots of different utilities, I, I imagine the foundations can grow quite a lot in the, in the years to come. Yeah, there's definitely a lot of work to do. Super interesting and exciting to think about this agentic future driven by things like MCP and agent to agent interactions, but actually putting that architecture in place within your company within your enterprise can be overwhelming because it sometimes seems like you just lose complete control. That's why I'm so privileged to be leading a company prediction guard that is helping you gain that controlled fact by deploying prediction guard, which is a self-hosted AI control plane within your organization, you can manage the supply chain on which your agents operate, institute runtime governance, manage observability, and none of that slows down agent building because it ships with a robust agent builder called agent forage out of the box. I would encourage you to check out what we're doing at prediction guard.com/practical AI, book a time to get a demo and talk with our team prediction guard.com/practical AI. So as we, as we start getting to the point where we can, I'd love to dive into kind of maybe get a high level overview of each of those projects that you described a little while ago, just kind of what it is for people that aren't familiar with them. And then maybe dive into where some of the stuff is going based on where you're at. I know that you and I have talked about MCP and other things. So I loved it. I love to go wherever you want to go in terms of some technical deep dives because we love that here. Yeah, sure. So we have agents in D. So this was a standard created by OpenAI. And this one standardizes like how projects, meaning like cold bases, communicate their their operating instructions, right? Two agents. And then there's goose, which is one of the first open source AI agents. And this one essentially provides like this agentic runtime. And then there's MCP, of course, which connects agents to tools and systems agent gateway. This one was, oh, and I didn't tell you who's came from block and MCP came from inthropic. Agent gateway came from a company called solo and solo created agent gateway to mediate traffic. So essentially like MCP traffic, A2A, as you're using this stuff and enterprise, you kind of want some controls around what the agent is doing and what it has access to. You want to, you know, make that observable and stuff like that. So agent gateway is a open source project that does that. And then A2A is the newest addition. This one is from Google. A2A is the agent to agent protocol. And this one is really cool. And that this is how agents can coordinate with other agents. So you can delegate work to another agent or, you know, just be able to collaborate on a given task, right? That's pretty cool. The I'm curious, you know, one of the things that that I know in my world that I've been exploring is, you know, if you look at late last year and people would just have an agent, you know, to do something. And then, you know, we kind of moved into this year and people are doing multiple agents that are starting to collaborate a bit. And you're starting to have that kind of cross-talking collaboration. And then now we, you know, as we record this, we're in August. And we're talking like it's gone orders of magnitude in terms of it's it's some and like that's not everybody. This is some use cases where you're talking tens of thousands of agents sometimes or hundreds of thousands or even millions are now coming into play. And as you're, I'm curious like as you're looking at that has to be a challenge to some degree from a scalability standpoint, because, you know, going back to what you were saying before, we're we're racing along so fast, much faster. And I'm old enough to remember like I won't I'm old. And therefore, I remember before internet was even a thing. And I was even an adult at that point sadly. And so like I know the velocity that things happened across each of the various technological revolutions that we've had over the past lifetime, if you will. And so this is going so much faster than any of those others. And all of those have had processes, you know, that's like the Linux Foundation itself, you know, came into being and in a lots of others where these technologies came, there was the need to get collaboration across competitors and across global concerns and needs. But you've stepped in to the fastest moving area ever. And it's gone in just a space of months from like singles to millions. And as we like, how does how does a working group? And especially considering that these are at the end of the day, all competitors, these different members, you know, in their in their own businesses, how do you manage that? Because by the time working groups like historically, by the time a working group would arrive at something, like sometimes you were so far past that. So how how does is there anything, you know, like, are there any expected time scales or anything on how it's getting these things together? So that it stays relevant. Because the speed, the speed of relevance is, is just unimaginable now. So in terms of how fast that is, like, how does this new foundation address these kinds of of problems that we've, we've had it to a lesser extent, but never liked today. Yeah, yeah, we knew going in when we were standing in the foundation up, in fact, that was a question. Do we, do we do a foundation foundations are slow? You know, yeah, I guess that's how people think this is not slow. This is not a slow move in space. Do we do this, right? We, we realize we have to do this because you just have to have these neutral homes for things that are this critical, but we cannot move at the pace that your traditional foundation will move at. So we move a lot faster. And I think it really helps that the folks on a working group, these are not volunteers doing this in their spare time. Like it is part of their job, you know, to innovate the future. And if you know, hey, we, we are trying to build a product on this standard, then you're going to speed everybody else something. We have to come to some conclusions here, right? And I think that really helps is that the innovators themselves are the members of these working groups. And so they have, basically, they they they have to move much faster, they have an incentive to not drag this along, you know, yeah, it does. I'm curious, you know, when you see, when they come into the working group, is it, you know, and you're talking, you know, what are to the rest of us on the outside, very fierce competitors, you know, you know, open AI and quad, you know, they're hammering out and Google's in there. And you know, there's a whole slew of them. And is the, is the, is the tenor of the conversation a little bit? Is it, I guess, because they got to get stuff done, as you said, got to get stuff done, because everyone's waiting to move on. Does that collaboration do they kind of just drop, I'm just, it's just as a sheer curiosity, they just dropped kind of that external competitive behavior and just get in say, yeah, let's just get it done. And yes, they do it's fascinating. They actually are very friendly with each other, right? And so like, sure, like, yeah, our company's just got into this heated Twitter war or something, but you and I got to feel this standard off, you know what I mean? You can let those crazy people talk, but we got to get this thing done right now. Super collaborative, which is amazing. It's It's amazing to watch. I tell people, like if you want to see the beauty of like open source and people working together from competing companies, all you got to do is go into MCP Discord server. It's a thing of beauty, there's just like dozens of these working groups within that protocol itself. And you have members from everywhere, every company that's like doing real work, not just throwing ideas out, but like doing real work to add new features or figure out like how to do this other new thing or solve this problem, because their company's depends on those things, right? And so it's beautiful, it's actually really beautiful to see. So as we start winding up here, I'm curious, like it's just kind of, you know, just the speed of operation is a little bit mind-boggling, as you're looking ahead and you guys have put together this foundation and you're having those really productive and rapid conversations to get stuff done so that this world continues at the velocity it's at, like where, what are some of the things that you might expect to see? Having come along the path, because I think you're in a bit of a unique position to say, you know, you've built into this, you're one of the people that set the foundation up, you've seen it start to work and you've seen it working well, you know, and with that, with those kinds of relationships forming and everything, how do you see things moving forward? You know, what, and you could be a little speculative, it's fine to be wrong, I say things on the show all the time that are wrong, Daniel and I are like, oh, we got that one wrong, but we try. But it's fun to try to think, we know where might things go, what are your thoughts? Like, where do you think, where do you think we're heading into this brave new world where everyone is trying to figure out, not just like, like, no one knows 10 years, but like, like, people are trying to figure out, where's it going to be in six months? Yeah, yeah. What are your thoughts around that? If we look at, like, you and I, you know, and probably everyone listening to this podcast, we kind of live in this bubble where, you know, we're likely very exposed to AI, we're working with it daily, that is not the case across the world, like, you know, the general population, like you said, one, they hate AI, and two, they probably are not using it, like, in their day to day, right? Maybe they've asked chat, GPT, a question, you know, they searched from something for Google and a little summary came up, and that's pretty much the extent of what they've done. So outside of our bubble, like, we have so many challenges right now, just amongst like, the tech community, outside of that, when you start looking at how, like, the everyday person is going to utilize agents for all sorts of things, right? Within their lives, you just start seeing all of these other things that we need to figure out. And so, I think that there's a lot we have to figure out. I think that'll consume us for the next couple of years. I do think that AI will become a part of, you know, the everyday person's day to day, just like mobile phones and internet have, I think, the same will exist. I hope, I don't know, but I hope we're not just giving it all to the agents, and we become workers for the agents, you know what I mean? I hope that we kind of get to that middle ground where we find, even though it's capable, this is not a good use of it. And these are the ways that we should be deploying it. Fantastic. That's some, I share that with you. I think we need to find that, you know, we're just the human fit into the equation and we're, where is AI a tremendous utility? Angie, thank you very much for coming on the show. This was a great conversation. Really appreciate it. Gave me a lot to think about. I plan to dive into some of those projects myself and learn a bit more about them, and thanks for coming on the show. Hope to have you back sometime. I enjoyed it. All right, that's our show for this week. If you haven't checked out our website, head to practicalai.fm, and be sure to connect with us on LinkedIn, X, or Blue Sky. You'll see us posting insights related to the latest AI developments, and we would love for you to join the conversation. Thanks to our partner Prediction Guard for providing operational support for the show. Check them out at PredictionGuard.com. Also, thanks to Breakmaster Cylinder for the Beats, and to you for listening. That's all for now. But you'll hear from us again next week. [MUSIC]

Podcast Summary

Key Points:

  1. Angie Jones, Vice President of the Agentic AI Foundation, transitioned from a long career in engineering and tech leadership at IBM, Twitter, and Block, where she pioneered AI agent education across 12,000 employees.
  2. The Agentic AI Foundation, launched in late 2025 under the Linux Foundation, provides a neutral, collaborative space for companies to co-develop open standards like MCP, Agents MD, and A2A, ensuring interoperability and trust across industries.
  3. Global diversity in technology adoption—such as mobile-first cultures in China and Japan—demands inclusive, cross-border standardization, and the foundation’s working groups enable real-time collaboration, transparency, and rapid innovation while respecting regional needs and regulations.

Summary:

Angie Jones, Vice President of the Agentic AI Foundation, shares her journey from engineering leadership at companies like Block and Twitter to founding a collaborative, open-source initiative focused on agentic AI. Her work at Block exposed her to the transformative potential of AI agents, leading to a pivotal realization: organizations need structured education and change management to adopt these tools effectively. She emphasizes that success lies not in overwhelming teams with technology, but in identifying where human expertise still excels and delegating the rest to AI.

This approach, which includes training “champions” from diverse teams to share proven practices, fosters trust and reduces resistance. The Agentic AI Foundation, formed in late 2025, brings together key players like OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and Block to co-develop critical standards—such as MCP (for agent-tool connectivity), A2A (agent-to-agent coordination), and Agent Gateway (for runtime control)—in a neutral, global environment. These standards enable interoperability, scalability, and security across enterprises.

Crucially, the foundation operates at high velocity, driven by active, incentivized working groups where industry leaders collaborate openly despite being competitors. This rapid, real-world innovation contrasts with traditional foundation timelines. Angie highlights that while AI agents are now being deployed at massive scale—sometimes involving millions of agents—common challenges remain in scalability and governance.

Looking ahead, she envisions AI becoming a daily tool for everyday users, much like mobile internet, but stresses the importance of maintaining a balanced human-AI partnership where AI augments, rather than replaces, human judgment. The foundation’s mission is not just to build standards, but to ensure global, equitable, and ethical AI adoption across cultures and industries.

FAQs

The Agentic AI Foundation is a neutral, global organization established to develop open standards for agentic AI. It was created so that companies like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google can collaborate on critical protocols without one entity controlling them, ensuring interoperability and trust across industries.

Key projects include MCP (Model Context Protocol), which enables agents to connect with tools and systems; Agents MD, which defines agent behavior; Goose, an open-source AI agent; Agent Gateway, which provides traffic control and observability; and A2A, Google's Agent-to-Agent Protocol that allows agents to collaborate and delegate tasks.

The foundation fosters collaboration by having working groups where industry leaders from competing companies work together to define standards. These groups operate with urgency and shared goals, often leading to highly productive and fast-paced discussions focused on real-world needs rather than competition.

Organizations should start by showing tangible benefits—like faster access to data or automated reporting—and focus on human strengths. By demonstrating how AI can support, not replace, human roles, and by building trust through small, meaningful use cases, departments are more likely to adopt agents without resistance.

Open source is central to the foundation’s mission. It allows transparency, community-driven innovation, and ensures that standards like MCP and A2A are widely accessible and continuously improved by developers and companies from around the world.

The foundation acknowledges that different regions—like China’s mobile-first culture or Japan’s robotics focus—have unique needs. Working groups include global members to ensure standards are inclusive, adaptable, and relevant across diverse markets and user experiences.

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