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 YouTube

About 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

  1. 0:00How agents find another way
  2. 1:05Introducing Dr. Heiko Klarl
  3. 1:45From access-control research to Nexis
  4. 5:11Losing control without a cyberattack
  5. 7:45Agents, bots and service accounts
  6. 15:58Enterprise safeguards and consumer risks
  7. 23:54What counts as a non-human identity?
  8. 28:00What makes companies invest in governance?
  9. 32:43Who is responsible for an agent?
  10. 36:58When permitted steps create a prohibited outcome
  11. 41:52Governance versus runtime enforcement
  12. 48:21The missing standard for delegated authority
  13. 49:57Discovering agents and connecting identity systems
  14. 52:32Customer examples, documentation and evidence
  15. 1:00:35AI regulation and hidden AI features in software
  16. 1:04:53Speed, safety and competing governance models
  17. 1:08:23What personal agent users should understand
  18. 1:12:23Jobs, robotics and uncertainty
  19. 1:13:56What will make companies take agent risk seriously?
  20. 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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