Andreas Welsch 0:30

Welcome back to another episode of What's the BUZZ?, where leaders share how they have turned hype into outcome. Today we'll talk about what actually changes when your customer is no longer human, but actually an AI agent. And who better to talk about it than someone who's been exploring this topic for quite a bit, Michael Carroll. Thank you so much for joining.

Michael Carroll 0:49

Hey, it's fabulous to be here. I've really been looking forward to this. This, th- this has been top of mind for me for quite some time. I think the world's been headed this way. We've been experiencing a little bit of it. I- it's, it's gonna transform all of our lives in ways we just can't imagine, and I think this conversation's gonna help us at least start to ask better questions. Does that make sense?

Andreas Welsch 1:12

Absolutely. I'm looking so forward to it. we met in person in, Washington DC a, a couple weeks ago- Yeah at an event. and, we just didn't have enough time to, to have that conversation, but it was so insightful already that I said, why don't we spend some time on the show and explore it for, the audience benefit as well?" So I'm so thankful, for you making the time to be with us today.

Michael Carroll 1:32

I'm looking forward to conversation. We'll see-

Andreas Welsch 1:34

Yeah

Michael Carroll 1:34

we'll see where this goes.

Andreas Welsch 1:35

Yeah

Michael Carroll 1:35

our original conversation was like, "Wow, we gotta do more of this."

Andreas Welsch 1:38

Yes, exactly. Now Michael, not everyone in the audience, might know you yet, so I thought it might be a good idea to introduce yourself real quick, who you are and what you do.

Michael Carroll 1:46

Yeah. So I'm Michael Carroll. I've been around a long time, that's why I got gray hair, gray beard. And, so I'm actually retired, but as a lot of people- in, in my situation can learn that it can be quite liberating. So the thing about retirement is that you get to choose the things you want to go do. And in this case, I get to go hang out at national events and talk to you and talk about the things that we think are gonna matter and shape the future, right? This is one of those things where I think the right perspective and better questions help sha-cha-shape the future. So I get to work on advisory boards and do AI research, and in that AI re- AI research, we push the frontiers of kinda how this technology develops and how we can begin to trust this technology in a way that's different than what we would say we hear the hype about. So we make it more trustable, more understandable for people, and maybe improve our perspective on what it not only can do, but more importantly, what it should do for us.

Andreas Welsch 2:52

what it should do. I think that's the key point here. I remember back in November of '25, I was reading this newar- news article that, Perplexity, was being sued by Amazon because Perplexity had just come out with its a- agentic AI browser. and Amazon said, "Hey, we... we're actually quite opposed to this because if a browser acts on behalf of a user, if an AI system or agent browses our catalog and recommends products, that means we're actually not making as much ad revenue," which was quite interesting to, to see that Amazon feels this business model is being threatened. obviously a big revenue source for them. And then I think it was in, in March of '26, the court actually said, "Yes, Amazon, you're right." Yeah. and companies like Perplexity and, and others are not allowed to use their agentic browsers to browse or scrape your websites exactly for that reason. But for me, that triggered the question of what changes, because companies like Amazon obviously, are making a lot of money from their ads. I have two books on, on, on Amazon, and certainly there are ads that I place, so more people see them. so I'm, I'm as much of a customer, as, as much as I am, some- someone who's being affected by that change. Then there's generative engine optimization, answer engine optimization. There are ads in ChatGPT and all of that. So- Can we actually trust that an agent that acts on our behalf, that shops on our behalf, finds the objectively most valuable, most relevant product for us?

Michael Carroll 4:24

I think the answer, I think the answer is maybe, right? But first some th- but I think we need to say to ourselves what's actually going on, right? and i- in the world there's kind of two things that are coming together, and in the middle we got to sort out how we want that trust to develop. On one side, you have this ubiquitous connectivity that is actually enabling kind of this degrees of separation of humanity, right? and, and so Stanley Milgram done a big study back in the '60s that said, in the current paradigm, people were six degrees of separation. And we all remember that. And then along come social media and technology, and now if you believe LinkedIn, it's three, and if you believe oth- other studies, it's 3.4, if you wanna be precise about it. and so ubiquitous connectivity that's improving all the time is one side of it. And then at the other side of it, the edge is starting to become more and more powerful. And process compute at the edge to the point that now whatever shape you want it to take, reasoning is going to become a standard at the edge. And by what I mean by reasoning is when you talk about the agentic behavior, right? and agents are things that act on your behalf to try and shape outcomes for you that use the ubiquitous connectivity. What you're looking at is collapsing the distance between you, everybody else, and everything else- from three to one.

Andreas Welsch 5:54

Yeah.

Michael Carroll 5:55

And the minute that happens, the question you have to ask yourself, if this, if the, if that reasoning is doing it, now it has to operate through an architecture that enables trust and permission. And so it's that architecture in the middle that gi- that gives you the enablement, to access the connectivity and then to engage on your behalf. So what, what re- what's required, right? Well- Yeah now you have to have some kind of trust and some kind of trace of trust, and some- something that says, "My reasoning and my agent is legitimate," right? Yeah. "And it's defensible," right? So now I have to have some way of say- of saying, "You can trust me," without me having to re-litigate my, the, the- Yeah my existence every time I want to go do something. So that's, that whole architecture has to be built. It also is a w- Possibly it has s- it, it could give us some strife in society, right? Because you could segregate society relative to their ability to pay. Relative to other standards that we may not fully appreciate in society, if we don't get that architecture right.

Andreas Welsch 7:10

and I remember not too long ago I w- I was seeing some chatter about, airfare for example. if you live in a certain zip code or you make certain transactions of certain amounts, we as- assume that you're more affluent than others. If you're more affluent, that means you can pay more for the same ticket that somebody else pays less for. Now, is this fair? is this just? That's one of the questions that, that comes to mind. the other part for me is, hey, the World Wide Web is, what, 25, 30 years old in its current form. Certainly much older than, than that if you think of ARPANET and others. But, you started to see companies optimizing, their ranking in search engines like Google. You started seeing companies place ads, to, to influence humans. Now we have agents. We, we- Yeah have on one hand ads in tools like ChatGPT, and I think it's quite interesting to, to see and to understand how that is going to develop. Why are you seeing certain ads? Is it because you're getting certain responses to your questions in the chat? And are these responses already influenced by the ad that you're going to see? And let's assume that's the case. how can you piggyback onto that as a brand to say, if somebody asks about these questions, show them our ad, recommend that this is the best product"?

Michael Carroll 8:25

I think it's gonna be the Wild West for a while.

Andreas Welsch 8:28

Yeah.

Michael Carroll 8:28

be- because figuring that out So if you think about it for a second, we're going from this architecture of the web, as you talk about, that was click-based- architecture and economy to an architecture that's built around what do I want?

Andreas Welsch 8:44

Yes.

Michael Carroll 8:44

and the reasoning engines were all, are all going to be the collapse of everybody. So the way personal agency works is you spend most of your life trying to orchestrate to get what you want, and you do most of the effort for the orchestration. What the re- what the reasoning to edge will do is it will do all the orchestration for you based on what you want, and so it will go out and arrange all the orchestration relative to what you want, and you just have to determine what you want, which now means all the effort for you is in determining why you want what you want.

Andreas Welsch 9:18

True. Yes.

Michael Carroll 9:18

and so n- now that's basically all the effort for you and it does all the orchestration, through the architecture using the ubiquitous connectivity, right? How do you build a, how do you build a non-click-based economy-

Andreas Welsch 9:35

Yeah

Michael Carroll 9:35

that allows that to suffice when basically it does all the optimization for you, right? So I can I can I'll give you an example, right? This is a real recent personal example for me, right? Is that my wife decided it was time for a new automobile And be- because you and I are really proficient AI users, right? I built tools that went out and secured quotes through internet commerce, right? So I built these things that went out and done it, got responses back through the internet commerce engines of the, o- of the, o- of the dealerships, right? In the forms that they were needed to reply in, evaluated all o- all of them relative and optimized every one of them, right? And pulled it down to the best option and negotiated the deal for me. And I didn't have to do anything.

Andreas Welsch 10:31

they have agentic commerce, right

Michael Carroll 10:32

there. Yeah. It's a good

Andreas Welsch 10:34

example.

Michael Carroll 10:34

It is, and it was a g- it was a great ex- great example. and, and it found, y- and f- and found all the best deals, all the best discounts, all that stuff for me, right? Just with a little bit of guidance on my end.

Andreas Welsch 10:49

Yeah.

Michael Carroll 10:49

it, it phenomenal.

Andreas Welsch 10:51

a couple of months ago, I spent some time, working with, Cloud Code and some agents there to optimize my website. And I found some, some, repositories on GitHub where users put up these agents, and they were so good that they gave me recommendations for how I can improve the website, not just the copy, but the structure, add schema, so agents can process it more easily. Add things like, llms.txt as a file of the most important information you want to see. optimize it, in, in little chunks and providing, answers to certain questions. And Similarly, to, to your scenario, I think that's right now something that many organizations either are already thinking about, and if they're not, they should be thinking about. How do I make my business more visible and accessible to agents on the internet so that they can transact with me in that, in, in that car dealership example?

Michael Carroll 11:48

I, I think that's I think that's what all com- commerce is going to have to learn, right? Is that, that ads, in the way that we used to th- used to think about things, aren't what they were, right? And that commerce is gonna be more engaging in the way that how do I deal with an agent that's doing the negotiation work for you?

Andreas Welsch 12:32

Yes.

Michael Carroll 12:32

And that's gonna be a different kind of world because all of it's gonna be optimized through the agent itself doing the mediat- the intermediation work. And that's gonna be different for all of us in the op- For- in the optimization.

Andreas Welsch 12:47

Look, so for about the last two years, I've had this slide in my, keynotes and workshops where I said, "Hey, th- this is the, the progression we're going through." We're starting with single agents, then we have two or three agents, then we have agents that are part of a business function, and then at some point we'll have agents that transact on your or your company's behalf with your vendors. And, while this is one example from our consumer lives, the same scenario obviously happens in B2B too and is already happening to, to some extent. So when you have two agents, vendor and customer transacting with each other, exchanging information, finding information, I think to your point earlier, trust becomes a, a big factor. to what level and to what degree are they authorized to transact with each other? Is this a repeat order? Is this something new? What information are they basing it on? Is it, a- aligned with our contracts? Whose interest, does the agent represent and have in mind? Can they be swayed? Things like that.

Michael Carroll 13:46

so I think that's a worthy discussion, right? so if you think about organizations for a second, right? It, an or- an or- organizations are largely built for two things, right? Intermediation, which is basically the translation and transfer of informa- information. And then mediation, which is the transformation of things, information or things from one state to the other. and when you look at that transformation piece and that permission to transform something from one state to another, right? the intermediation part, AI is gonna be really good at doing that because the rules-based state stuff is largely reversible. And so I think we're gonna see largely that become autonomous in companies, right? So whether it's, if you're familiar with the Produ- Purdue Stack, right? You're gonna see a lot of that stuff. so the, the categories that exist to support the Purdue Stack will probably become somewhat disrupted, but the functionality is gonna stay- for, for many of those components. But when you look at, when you look at the mediation piece, that, that transformation part of things, anything that requires some type of approval or permission. So if, i-if you're gonna wear the responsibility of it, you're going to need some type of defensibility because you... That responsibility transfers to you. A machine is never going to bear the responsibility of it. Yes. So it has to have a causal chain of reasoning. Explainable AI is an abomination. it's an in- it's an invitation to re-litigation that we already have too... way too many alignment meetings to litigate what it is we think we meant, right- Yes when we agreed to do something.

Andreas Welsch 15:39

Yep.

Michael Carroll 15:39

And so causal chain of reasoning is why causal exists in the first place, right? And I think having that as a part of what trust means, so it's auditable, it's defensible- Yeah it's legitimacy is a part of what it would mean to, for the transformation of one thing, whether it's information to some other type, of information or change of state, is part of what this architecture will have to have.

Andreas Welsch 16:07

But it sounds like we're really just at the very beginning of all of this, where we are figuring out what can we use these agents for. we're... many of us in, in, in the industry are exploring and at a minimum, on a personal level, what can these agents do? How do we build them? What are some of the pitfalls? Larger organizations, are not just experimenting, but are rolling this out. I've seen some good examples in financial services, in, in business functions like customer service and so on. But to your point, I think this next part is really a-about building this trust architecture, having, ha-having also a record of what was done by whom, human or agent, at what point in time, based on what information. So you can go back and we can actually trace and say, "Okay, this is what happened and why it happened," which hasn't always been that, that easy. Thinking back even a couple of years ago with machine learning and looking for things like, SHAP or some of the, explainable, AI methods. So Early, but we know where this needs to go if something like this a- agentic commerce is to take off and is to, expand from consumer in- into B2B as well.

Michael Carroll 17:13

If you can't trust it, it won't happen.

Andreas Welsch 17:17

Yes.

Michael Carroll 17:17

I'm, I'm, I think that's... I think we're probably everybody would be in agreement is if you can't trust it, it won't happen. and, and if you go back to our experience at L- with LLMs, right? Yeah. for those of us that were early into it, we didn't go very far and we went, "Wait a minute," right? it's just cool, but it's... We better be really good at this. Yeah. And most of us got really good at it fast.

Andreas Welsch 17:41

Yeah. to, to some extent, I think that's still the, the question that needs to be solved next. how do we trust these systems to act reliably and repeatedly, so we know that we can give them more autonomy? The fact that they can do it, yeah, sure. I think that the technical capabilities are there. but does it work every time? What happens if it doesn't? How do you become aware of it? Can you jump in? Does another agent jump in? And, to your point, I think those are the architectural decisions that they need to be made.

Michael Carroll 18:11

Yeah. So that's what, when you hear me talk about causal-

Andreas Welsch 18:14

Yeah

Michael Carroll 18:15

causal is an architecture, right? It's not, it's, it's not, it's not anything else other than a reasoning architecture. Yeah. and so Pearl basically laid the foundation, a guy named Judea Pearl laid the foundation of it. And then so it's the application of how you apply thinking to something. And so that, that's, that gets you to the trust part of it. But it's not m- a lot of people would say, that means it's deterministic." Causal is not deterministic. It's, it, it's actually agentic in na- in nature, right? It's the same thing that, that people do to create agency, and that's what it's based on is the human agency model. It means that I understand what's true about the world around me. I understand what I can do to make things true, and then that's, that's how I build a hypothesis that if I do this, what if, right? And then I have the ability to understand the actions I took relative to the evidence of the outcome. Yeah. And then I learn from that evidence and I iterate forward. That's how I shape outcomes for the future. That's causal, but it's not deterministic.

Andreas Welsch 19:17

So what do you think, where is this going? Again, I'm coming back to the ads that, that we're seeing. You search for something on the web, maybe you still use Google to do that, and shortly after, ads start popping up for the same or similar products. So you might take an action because you see or you keep seeing these ads. I've been listening to a lot of music- Yeah. I think- on, on Spotify lately, I keep getting the same ads. and again, I know, but I'm not taking action. how is that changing with agents and how do you know that an agent acted on verifiable trusted information or because somebody, convinced it that's the best option for them that you should pursue?

Michael Carroll 19:58

I, I really don't think ads go away, right? I think, I, I think you'll still see ads show up on TV. I think you'll still see them sh-show up on phone. But if you, if an ad piques your interest, I think what'll happen is that because, people still like to watch YouTube, people still like to watch TV. Sure. I still think there's room for ads to show up. But what I think what'll happen is that people will turn to their agent and say, "I'm interested in this." "Is this the best option for me?" And I think the agent will evaluate that. Now- They may say that's their preference, and what the ads will likely do is they will, w- they will actually try and bias you to inform your agent that's your preference, more or less. And I think you'll probably see that become more a tone in the ad- to get you to use your agent to inform preference. Likely that's what will become true.

Andreas Welsch 20:55

that's an interesting angle. so far I've been thinking about it, as, vendors trying to make it into Perplexity's, recommendations, right? or ranking or getting into OpenAI's ranking so whenever you ask a question, that's your ad that's being shown, and that's the level of influence. Plus, I feel a lot of ads that we listen to or, or that we see, they are, they're geared towards triggering some kind of em- emotional reaction. There's a need, there's a paucity or an absence of something, that- that you're feeling or that you didn't know you were feeling, but now after watching it, you are, craving ice cream or fast food, or you see this new car or what have you. But there's usually some em- emotional component that, vendors want you to act upon. And, and- Now, now with agents, that, that emotional component goes away. it's in, in theory, factual and objective, but what are the ways in which your agent will be influenced to take an action?

Michael Carroll 21:55

so, so let's play that out for a second, right? Yeah. so who's, so who's gonna build the, who's gonna build the reasoning agents at the edge, right? and then who's gonna have the greatest amount of influence over the ability of, so today we have this commerce engine, whether it's Google or Amazon or whatever, right? And then the reasoning agents at the edge, who's gonna have the greatest amount of influence over you that basically connects the ad space, right? whatever platform you're watching it on, and then that ties to the reasoning agent, and then the l- the last closure loop would be n- probably not the, ubiquitous connectivity. It's the architecture of trust. and so whoever closes the triad of my ability to influence the reasoning agent, right?

Andreas Welsch 22:45

Yep.

Michael Carroll 22:45

And the platform of influence, which is the optics that you're watching things through- the media influence, right? And that architecture of trust that we talk about. If you can close that triad, now you got something that's fairly controllable, right?

Andreas Welsch 23:02

Yes. Perfect.

Michael Carroll 23:04

who ha- who has the power to do that? That's a g- that's a good question.

Andreas Welsch 23:07

I think the ones that, that, that have been, called dead, the ones that have been doing it for a long time. So the likes of Google, right? For example. Yeah. I think Google is, is not dead,

Michael Carroll 23:19

Oh, no, no way. No way, shape, or form. Sure. and I think you've, you got the reach to do it too, right? It's-

Andreas Welsch 23:24

Yeah

Michael Carroll 23:25

it, I think it's, that's likely

Andreas Welsch 23:27

Yeah. So then it becomes more of an evolution of how to, advertise, search, influence, in- It's orchestration, right? that change, right? Yeah. So fascinating. Michael, we've covered a lot of ground, over the last 27 minutes of what changes when your customer all of a sudden is an agent. I was wondering if there are any, key takeaways, maybe two, three key takeaways that, that you'd like to take the audience away from our conversation today before we wrap up.

Michael Carroll 23:56

I think the major key takeaway is this collapse of distance between people and things. Is that the reality of our lives is that, that this confluence of technology and is really pointing back to people, right? And so all the confluence, so whether, whether it's biomedical, whatever, everything's pointing back to people. AI is actually pointing back to people, right? And so it's gonna reduce the separation. It's not, it's not pulling people apart, it's actually pulling people back closer to everything in your li- in your lives, right? And it's separating you by one degree from everything and everybody else, right? If you choose for it to be, right? And so you gotta ch- you gotta make this choice to, to be more engaged 'cause these tools are massively powerful. and I think the ability to touch everybody else on the planet that's connected to this, everything else- on the planet that's connected to this, all the biomedical that's connect- that's gonna be connected to this, it is wonderfully exciting. But everything's pointed back at the individual, and that's as it should be

Andreas Welsch 25:15

So that means I need to update, my, my phrase, right? and my knowledge. It's not the six degrees of s- of Kevin Bacon, but the one degree

Michael Carroll 25:23

It's the one degree.

Andreas Welsch 25:24

Yeah.

Michael Carroll 25:25

Yeah. it's w- liberating.

Andreas Welsch 25:27

l- yes, for sure, and super exciting, especially if you get hands-on and you explore how this works and, think about where this might go eventually. Yeah.

Michael Carroll 25:35

Will there be any downtime for us? Because you and I work more than we ever have now, even though, even a- if it said AI, AI would, A- AI would reduce the need for us, it surely hasn't.

Andreas Welsch 25:48

So to me, that's where the human component comes in, to say- Yeah,

Michael Carroll 25:51

absolutely

Andreas Welsch 25:51

I need a break, and I need to take a break, and I want to take a break." and, the world is still turning when I come back to it.

Michael Carroll 25:57

Yes, it is.

Andreas Welsch 25:59

So wonderful. Michael, it's been a pleasure having you on the show. Thank you for sharing your expertise with us, and I really appreciate this, unscripted format and continuing our conversation that started a couple weeks ago in Washington.

Michael Carroll 26:09

This has been fabulous. I thank you so very much.