Interview
Who controls your AI agents?

Dr. Heiko Klarl
CEO, Nexis
79 minHosted by Kim Isenberg and Peter ThumRecorded on 3 September 2026
Watch on YouTubeAbout this conversation
An AI agent can have permission for every individual step and still produce an outcome the company never intended. How do you keep control once software can choose its own route to a goal? Dr. Heiko Klarl, CEO of Nexis, joins Kim Isenberg and Peter Thum to discuss AI agent security, identity and access management, and the practical limits of agent governance.
They talk about agents handling invoices and payments, why a model update can change an agent’s behavior, and what happens when an agent’s human owner leaves the company. Heiko distinguishes policy governance from runtime enforcement, explains the need for standards for delegated authority, and describes how enterprises discover agents and review their access.
Disclosure: Nexis covers the video production costs.
Topics
- Losing control without a cyberattack
- Agents, bots and service accounts as non-human identities
- Who is responsible for an agent?
- When permitted steps create a prohibited outcome
- Governance versus runtime enforcement
- The missing standard for delegated authority
- AI regulation and hidden AI features in software
Chapters
- 0:00How agents find another way
- 1:05Introducing Dr. Heiko Klarl
- 1:45From access-control research to Nexis
- 5:11Losing control without a cyberattack
- 7:45Agents, bots and service accounts
- 15:58Enterprise safeguards and consumer risks
- 23:54What counts as a non-human identity?
- 28:00What makes companies invest in governance?
- 32:43Who is responsible for an agent?
- 36:58When permitted steps create a prohibited outcome
- 41:52Governance versus runtime enforcement
- 48:21The missing standard for delegated authority
- 49:57Discovering agents and connecting identity systems
- 52:32Customer examples, documentation and evidence
- 1:00:35AI regulation and hidden AI features in software
- 1:04:53Speed, safety and competing governance models
- 1:08:23What personal agent users should understand
- 1:12:23Jobs, robotics and uncertainty
- 1:13:56What will make companies take agent risk seriously?
- 1:17:39Where to find Heiko and Nexis
Kim Isenberg is co-founder and Editor-in-Chief of Superintelligence, an AI newsletter published every weekday.
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