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

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
• The human cost of spending all day working with AI

Episode Timestamps

00:00 Intro

00:07 What Block actually is

02:40 From CERN to Block

05:19 Building Goose and taking it open source

06:29 Agents vs. harnesses vs. interfaces

10:28 MoneyBot, ManagerBot and BuilderBot

15:56 Memory, access and learning over time

22:53 What ants can teach us about AI memory

26:48 Two versions of where AI could go

28:26 Buzz and the idea of multiplayer AI

29:56 "Meat proxy": the new office problem

35:09 The Buzz case study and a 50% productivity jump

37:06 The new bottleneck now that AI can write the code

49:11 Rebuilding institutional knowledge after team restructuring

52:00 How AI is changing hiring and interviews

57:35 The loneliness of working with AI all day

59:13 Why Brad does what he does

Connect with Brad on LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/bradleyaxen/

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