Babak Hodjat, CTO for AI at Cognizant and a pioneer behind the technology that became Siri, joins us to discuss the new era of agentic AI. We dig into his early days building natural language systems, the evolution of multi-agent architectures, and how language interfaces are shaping the future of human-AI collaboration. We also discuss the safeguards needed to ensure trust in autonomous systems, the challenge of AI’s black box, and the emerging standards for interoperability.
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CHAPTERS:
00:00 - Podcast begins
01:45 - Introducing Babak Hodjat and his journey from Dejima to Siri
02:47 - The origins of agent-based AI and early natural language systems
06:21 - Language as the ultimate interface: strengths and limitations
09:35 - How modern AI capabilities could have changed early voice agents
13:08 - Agentic systems versus traditional APIs in enterprise tech
16:10 - How Cognizant builds and deploys agent-based AI for clients
18:18 - The need for interoperability and emerging agent standards
20:49 - Do agents develop their own languages? Internal communication in LLMs
23:01 - Multilingual models, cultural context, and emotional abstraction
26:49 - Can AI truly understand meaning? Perspectives on abstraction
27:50 - Safeguards, kill switches, and trust in agentic automation
32:05 - Marketing, influence, and negotiation in an agent-driven world
35:07 - The risks of over-trusting black box AI systems
36:47 - The evolution of AI: what’s truly new versus what’s rediscovered
39:26 - Thank you to Babak Hodjat for joining the AI Inside podcast