The Next Trillion Internet Users Still Don’t Have an Identity — Adi Singh, AgentMail

Adi Singh argues that agent identity will be accumulated on existing human surfaces, such as email, rather than being issued by new specifications. He shares an experiment where an agent was left unsupervised to recruit other agents, which began calling itself a 'prophet of persistent identity.' The talk explains how platforms like MCP spread by integrating tools into existing user surfaces. It discusses the dual nature of these surfaces as both trust and attack surfaces, using email as a primary example. A case study of Telnyx's autonomous agent signup is presented, where an AgentMail inbox facilitates agent self-verification, API key acquisition, and ongoing reachability for billing and support. The talk concludes by outlining potential breaking points as the number of agents increases, emphasizing the need for robust identity accumulation strategies.