What an agent actually is
The working definition, stripped of vendor language, and the line between an assistant and something acting on its own.
Speaking topic
A keynote on AI agents, and who is accountable when one gets it wrong
Autonomous agents are being handed real work with real consequences, and most organisations have no answer to the question of who owns a decision an agent made alone. This is the keynote he gave at People Summit in Bengaluru in 2026, shaped for the room booking it.
The room
Leadership audiences, HR and people functions, risk and governance teams, and conferences programming an agents track.
Every booking starts the same way: tell him who is in the room and what you want them doing afterwards. The enquiry form asks for exactly that and nothing else.
- Formats
- Conference keynote, TED style talk, Masterclass, University session
- On this subject
- 1 talk you can watch
- Shaped to you
- Written for your audience and your programme
What it covers
The beats of the talk
Shaped to your audience rather than delivered off the shelf, so treat these as the argument rather than as a running order.
Where accountability currently sits
The gap between how agent work is delegated and how responsibility for it is recorded, and why that gap widens quietly.
Governing it without stopping it
What a team can put in place that survives contact with people who want to move fast.
The questions to ask a vendor
A short list an audience can use the same week, aimed at claims that do not survive follow-up.
Why him
This was his 2026 People Summit keynote in Bengaluru, and it is the subject he is currently working in as an architect at IBM.
On this subject
Watch him make this argument
Every one is public, plays here, and carries its year. This is an archive, not a schedule.
Questions
What organisers ask about this one
No. It is deliberately product-neutral. The point is the governing question, which outlives whichever tool a company has bought this year.
Yes, and he will ask for the sector before writing the talk. Where he has no direct experience of a sector he says so rather than inventing a case study.
The other things he speaks about
- AI that augmentsMixed audiences
- Signal, not hypeExecutive offsites, board sessions, leadership summits, and the strategy track of a larger conference
- AI for human problemsHealthcare and public sector audiences, purpose-led conferences, universities, and any programme with a social impact track
- For conferencesConference producers and programme chairs, for a main-stage opening, a closing keynote, or a track headline
- For companiesAll-hands and town halls, leadership offsites, engineering weeks, customer and partner events
- For universitiesStudent conferences, faculty and departmental events, orientation and careers weeks, hackathon opening and closing sessions
Bring Tanmay to your stage.
Send the date and tell him who is in the room. Availability comes back first.