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Microsoft’s Vision for an Internet Made for Agents With CTO Kevin Scott (Best of the Pod)

AI & I

2 DAYS AGO
AI & I

AI & I

2 DAYS AGO

Shownote

In 2025, Kevin Scott bet that the agentic web would be the next big thing in AI. The Microsoft CTO argued that for agents to be genuinely useful, they'd need to be able to take action on our behalf—which would mean giving them access to the same sprawl of tools, data, and systems that make up the internet. Today, that bet is starting to pay off, as the foundational infrastructure for the agentic web is now being built. On this week's AI & I, Dan Shipper revisits his conversation with Kevin. They discuss Microsoft's role in the agentic web, why openness doesn't have to come at the expense of security, and why programmers should stay curious about new tools rather than resist them on principle. If you found this episode interesting, please like, subscribe, comment, and share! To hear more from Dan Shipper: Subscribe to Every: https://every.to/subscribe Follow him on X: https://twitter.com/danshipper Go to https://attio.com/every and get 15% off your first year. Timestamps:  0:00 Start 1:44 Introduction 2:49 The race to close the "capability overhang" 4:31 How agents will evolve into practical, useful tools 6:48 The role Kevin sees Microsoft playing in the agent ecosystem 12:05 How robust security measures can coexist with open ecosystems 15:39 Kevin's philosophy on being a craftsman in the age of agents 20:52 How the landscape of software development agents will evolve 25:33 The future of agentic workflows Links to resources mentioned in the episode: Kevin Scott on X: https://twitter.com/kevin_scott Model Context Protocol (MCP): https://modelcontextprotocol.io NLWeb: https://github.com/microsoft/NLWeb GitHub Copilot: https://github.com/features/copilot

Highlights

The episode examines how AI is moving from generating responses to carrying out useful work across connected digital systems.
00:00
Stay curious and use tools that work for you
01:44
AI is evolving from scaling models to building agents
02:50
AI’s capabilities exceed its usefulness
04:36
The agentic web depends on open, composable protocols
09:41
Open standards make agent permissions safer.
12:12
Innovation and security can reinforce each other
15:39
Craftsmanship remains important as tools evolve
20:57
The best agents understand specific user problems.
25:45
AI agents turn complex tasks into asynchronous workflows

Chapters

Start
00:00
Introduction
01:44
The race to close the "capability overhang"
02:49
How agents will evolve into practical, useful tools
04:31
The role Kevin sees Microsoft playing in the agent ecosystem
06:48
How robust security measures can coexist with open ecosystems
12:05
Kevin's philosophy on being a craftsman in the age of agents
15:39
How the landscape of software development agents will evolve
20:52
The future of agentic workflows
25:33

Transcript

Dan Shipper: You're someone who I think cares a lot about the craft of things. One of the knocks on using agents for coding is it gets rid of some of that feeling or something like that. How do you feel about that? Kevin Scott: I love the fact that my peo...