The AI Report

← The AI Report17 sept. · 1 h 05 min

Inside Block's Bet on Multiplayer AI | Brad Axen, Head of AI Capabilities

Inside Block's Bet on Multiplayer AI | Brad Axen, Head of AI Capabilities17 sept.1 h 05 min

Brad Axen, Block's Head of AI Capabilities and the original author of Goose, joins Liam to talk about what actually makes AI useful at work. They cover how Block went from building an early open-source AI agent to MoneyBot, ManagerBot, BuilderBot and Buzz, and why Brad thinks the hardest problems now are memory, access and interface, not just model intelligence.

Brad also explains why AI memory should belong to the business rather than a single bot, what ants can teach us about shared memory systems, why "meat proxy" is becoming a new office problem, and how Buzz is testing a multiplayer model where humans and AI agents work in the same space.

Key Topics Covered

Goose, Block's open-source AI agent, and the Agentic AI Foundation

Agents vs. harnesses vs. interfaces

MoneyBot, ManagerBot and BuilderBot

Why AI memory should belong to the business, not the bot

Stigmergy and ants as a model for shared memory

Buzz and Block's "multiplayer" approach to AI at work

"Meat proxy" and the new office busywork AI can create

Why the bottleneck is shifting from writing code to deciding what to build

How AI is changing hiring, interviews and day-to-day work