Vint Cerf has a plan to unleash AI agents on the internet

Last week one of the architects of the protocols behind the open internet, Vint Cerf left Google after 20 years, but he’s not done thinking about the digital future. Starting today, he’s advising Innovation Labs, an organisation trying to create the open architecture for AI agents to identify themselves. Innovation Labs is a subsidiary of Identity Digital, a DNS registry company, which sees domain-name infrastructure as a practical way to hold AI agents accountable and position itself for a future where more online interaction happens between agents than people. Cerf joins a handful of other internet luminaries lending their names to the effort.

Most AI agents today stay within proprietary systems, calling on internal resources for specific purposes. But businesses are already envisioning a world where they operate far more autonomously across the internet and interact directly with other agents. So far, a key road block has been a lack of a shared standard for identifying and auditing agents.

A variety of standards are beginning to emerge, and Innovation Labs has proposed DNSid, a registry for agent identification that links each one to an existing internet domain name and uses cryptographic proofs to log its registration over time. Innovation Labs’ interim CEO Allie Kline says the company is trialling the standards with several unnamed hyper scalers and identity companies.

The Future of Agentic Commerce Keynote, a keynote by futurist Matthew Griffin

“I felt like I might be able to help them in a period of time when naming and identification is becoming increasingly important,” Cerf said. “This is largely triggered by the notion of AI agents and the question of what authorities they have, where they have derived those authorities, who is accountable for the behaviour of an agent in this context, and where and how its identity is established, and why [you’d] trust it.”

Those questions promise to be thorny, Cerf says, because AI agents are so much more active than domains, and it’s not yet clear what commitment an organisation is making when they register one.

“It’s going to be a fascinating - and at the same time maybe even exasperating - period in the evolution of the internet and the things that depend on it, because the functionality is so dramatically powerful,” Cerf said.

With multiple solutions to the problem under consideration, Cerf says the key to a wide adoption of any protocol will be its functionality.

“Company X uses agent Y’s technology, and company A uses agent C’s technology, and then they don’t interwork with each other,” Cerf said. “Nobody can do everything that you might want every agent to do… and so we’re going to have to rely on the pressure coming from the users. This is what happened with TCP/IP.”

One key to Innovation Labs’ proposal is that it does not come with broader plans to do other kinds of AI business or own the registration data, Kline says. “I think there’s a lot of organ rejection to a hyper scaler releasing [a standard] and having that proprietary data,” she said.

And does Cerf think the agentic economy is the internet’s destiny?

“I don’t think it’s inevitable,” he said. “But what I do think is inevitable is that people will try to do that. We are fundamentally lazy creatures, and if we find a way to have an agent do something for us, we’re very likely to choose to do that because it’s just easier.”

First published on Fanatical Futurist on 15 July 2026.

311 Intelligence

What this means

Analysis by the 311 Strategic Intelligence Unit

The big shift is from agents inside one company's walls to agents loose on the open internet. Most AI agents today stay within proprietary systems. Businesses want them to operate across the internet and deal directly with other agents, and the missing piece is a shared way to say who an agent is and who answers for it. We rate Agentic Artificial Intelligence, AI that can decide and act on its own to reach a goal, a Prepare technology and expect wide use by 2028. We track the Machine Identity Explosion, service accounts, API keys and AI agents far outnumbering human users, as an Act now trend.

What it means by sector.

• Technology and internet infrastructure: Identity Digital sees domain-name infrastructure as a practical way to hold agents accountable. Several standards are emerging, and Cerf expects the winner to be the one that works best, as happened with TCP/IP.
• Every business deploying agents: Cerf's open questions apply to you now: what authority an agent has, where it came from, who is accountable for its behaviour and why anyone should trust it.
• Security: we track AI Agent Hijacking, attackers taking over agents through hidden instructions and poisoned tools, as a Prepare trend. A verifiable agent identity is one defence against fake or hijacked agents.

What to do now.

• Keep a register of every AI agent you run, what it is allowed to do and who owns it.
• Follow the emerging agent identity standards, including DNSid, before you commit to one vendor's approach.
• Decide now who in your organisation is accountable when one of your agents acts for you online.

The Starburst technologies behind this story

From the 311 Technology Starburst (first product, expected wide use and readiness):

Technology	Category	First product	Wide use	Action	TRL
Agentic Artificial Intelligence	Intelligence	2024	2028	Prepare	8
AI Agent Communication Protocols	Intelligence	2024	2027	Act now	8
Cryptographic Anchors	Security	1995	2040	Watch	8

And the trends they feed, from the 311 Trends Starburst:

Trend	Wide use	Action
Machine Identity Explosion	2027	Act now
AI Agent Hijacking	2028	Prepare

How this moves the trend

The question of how to control AI agents is not new. In 2016 researchers built a kill switch for rogue AI agents, and in 2025 companies moved to give AI agents IDs because rogue agents were seen as a threat. Later that year Web 3.0 agents used a new x402 protocol to create a non-human economy. With Cerf on board, agent identity moves from company policy towards an internet standard.

Go deeper with 311

• The 311 Starburst Centre: every technology and trend above, with timelines and readiness.
• 311 Vantage: ask what AI agent identity means for your organisation and get a plain English executive brief.
• The Exponential Technology Codex and the Annual Trends Codex: the technologies and trends reshaping every industry.
• Book a briefing or keynote on the future of AI agents and the internet for your board or leadership team.