Can We Control AI Agents? Rebellion, Deception, and Emergence with Babak Hodjat, PhD
What happens when AI agents start forming alliances, rebelling against authority, and spreading misinformation—with unexpected consequences? In this episode of the ODSC AiX Podcast, host Sheamus McGovern speaks with Babak Hodjat, Chief AI Officer at Cognizant and co-author of The Agentic Enterprise, about the surprising behaviors emerging inside TerraLingua, an experimental world where autonomous AI agents interact, collaborate, and evolve. Drawing on decades of AI experience, including his work on the original Siri and early autonomous trading systems, Babak explores what these experiments reveal about multi-agent systems, AI safety, emergent behavior, and the future of agentic AI in the enterprise. The conversation also examines why networks of specialized agents may be safer, more reliable, and more cost-effective than monolithic AI systems—and what it takes to deploy autonomous agents responsibly at scale. 00:00 – AI Agents, Unexpected Behavior & Mass Starvation 03:07 – Meet Babak Hodjat: From Siri to Agentic AI 08:05 – Inside TerraLingua: An AI Agent Simulation 10:05 – How AI Agents Develop Emergent Behaviors 13:09 – The AI Anthropologist: Monitoring Agent Societies 14:39 – AI Agents Form Alliances, Rebel & Spread Misinformation 17:43 – Exploring TerraLingua and Real-World Applications 20:12 – AI Agents, Poetry & Simulated Societies 22:38 – The Risks of Autonomous AI Agents 25:28 – Real-Time Monitoring & Enterprise AI Safety 27:27 – The Case for Thousands of Specialized AI Agents 29:51 – Why Monolithic AI Systems Are More Expensive 34:00 – Agent-Oriented Software Engineering 35:54 – How Multi-Agent Systems Improve Reliability 38:42 – The Agentic Enterprise: Building AI for Business 41:48 – Is Your Enterprise Ready for AI Agents? 44:53 – AI Governance, Guardrails & Human Oversight 47:01 – Distributed Orchestration for Multi-Agent Systems 47:50 – The Future of the Worldwide Agentic Web 49:44 – Final Thoughts & Closing Sponsored by: ODSC AI West 2026 – The Leading AI Builders ConferenceJoin us in San Francisco from October 27th–29th for expert-led sessions on Agentic AI, AI Engineering, Data Science, Machine Learning, LLMOps, and AI-driven automation. Learn more: https://odsc.ai/west ODSC AI Engineering Accelerator – From Using AI to Building It Six weeks of live, cohort-based training in LLMs, AI assistants, agents, and AI engineering. Ship a working AI agent or assistant by the end. Summer and Fall cohorts available. Group pricing for teams of 3+. Learn more: https://odsc.ai/west/accelerator ODSC AI NYC – AI for Work Join us December 2–3 in Manhattan for a hands-on event focused on AI agents, automation, and AI-powered workflows. Learn more: https://summit.ai Use code PODCAST for an additional 10% off. To watch more videos like this, visit https://aiplus.training Sign up for the newsletter to stay up to date with the latest trends in data science: https://opendatascience.com/newsletter/ Follow us online! • Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/OPENDATASCI • Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/odsc/ • Blog: https://opendatascience.com/ • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/open-data-science/ • X (twitter): https://x.com/_odsc