Organizing The AI Agents

InnovationAIOrganizing The AI AgentsByJohn Werner,Contributor.Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. I am an MIT Senior Fellow & Lecturer, 5x-founder & VC investing in AIFollow AuthorMay 29, 2026, 05:30am EDT--:-- / --:--This voice experience is generated by AI. Learn more.This voice experience is generated by AI. Learn more.SHANTOU, CHINA - MARCH 06: In this photo illustration, the logo of open-source AI agent OpenClaw is displayed on a smartphone screen on March 6, 2026 in Shantou, Guangdong Province of China. (Photo by Qin Zihang/VCG via Getty Images)VCG via Getty ImagesAs we move into a time of agentic AI, and there’s a lot of consensus around this, we start to think about how the environment will look: how will the AI agents talk to each other? What kinds of self-assembly will be the norm?“A new organizational blueprint is emerging,” writes Alex Fleck at Microsoft. “It blends machine intelligence with human judgment to create systems that are AI-operated, but human-led.”That word, “led,” carries a lot of weight. How, exactly, will humans be managing agent swarms? And how much of a human in the loop will remain in the average process?Listening InI was at an MIT event in April where I heard a panel talking about these questions. At the Imagination in Action conference, Debo Dutta, Chief AI Officer at Nutanix, interviewed Antonio Figueiredo, senior director at Salesforce, Sam Sharaf, a project lead at Google, Partha Madhira, an engineer at Kyndryl, and Rudina Seseri, Founder and Managing Partner of Glasswing Ventures.Dutta had his own concept of agent swarm systems, one drawn from pop culture.“This is my cartoon version,” he said. “I love cartoons and the ‘Despicable Me’ series, so I think of (agents) as ‘minions.’ So if you don't completely put the right guardrail and governance around the minions, and the minions can be owned by different gurus of the world, talking to each other, I think it'll have a big societal...