Vint Cerf is working on a plan to unleash AI agents on the open internet

Vint Cerf says his favorite place is a place he’s never been before.

One of the protocol architects behind the open Internet, Surf Leave Google 20 years later last week, but he’s not done thinking about the digital future. Starting today, he advises Innovation Labs, an organization trying to create an open architecture for AI agents to learn about themselves.

Innovation Labs is a subsidiary of Identity Digital, a DNS registrar, which sees domain name infrastructure as a practical way to hold AI agents accountable and position itself for a future where online interaction occurs between agents more than people. Surf joins handful Other Internet stars are lending their names to the effort.

Most AI agents today remain within proprietary systems, drawing on internal resources for specific purposes. But companies are already envisioning a world where they operate more autonomously online and interact directly with other agents. Until now, the main barrier has been the lack of a common standard for identifying and reviewing agents.

A variety of standards are beginning to emerge, and innovation labs have proposed them DNSA Registration to identify the agent Which links each one to an existing Internet domain name and uses cryptographic evidence to record its registration over time. Allie Klein, Innovation Labs’ interim CEO, says the company is piloting the standards with several unnamed identity verification and identity companies.

“I felt like I might be able to help them in a period of time where naming and identification are becoming increasingly important,” Cerf told TechCrunch. “This goes back in large part to the idea of ​​AI agents and the question of what powers do they have, where do they derive those powers, who is responsible for the agent’s behavior in this context, where and how they are identified, and why[you trust them].”

These questions can be thorny, says Cerf, because AI agents are much more active than domains, and it’s not yet clear what commitment an organization is making when it registers one.

“It will be a fascinating — and at the same time perhaps exasperating — time in the evolution of the Internet and the things that depend on it, because its functionality is so incredibly powerful,” Cerf said.

With multiple solutions to the problem under consideration, Cerf says the key to widespread adoption of any protocol will be its functionality.

“Company “No one can do everything you might want every agent to do…so we’ll have to rely on pressure from users. That’s what happened with TCP/IP.”

A key element of Innovation Labs’ proposal is that it doesn’t come with broader plans to do other types of AI work or own registration data, Klein says. “I think there’s a lot of member reluctance to release the hypermobility scale (standard) and have that private data,” she told TechCrunch.

Does Cerf believe that the agent economy is the destiny of the Internet?

“I don’t think this is inevitable,” he said. “But what I think is inevitable is that people will try to do it. We’re basically lazy creatures, and if we find a way to get an agent to do something for us, we’re much more likely to choose to do it because it’s easier.”