Personal AI Agents: Nanda and Wajo.ai
Personal AI Agents: NANDA and Wajo.ai
October 13 | 5:00–7:00 PM
Join Prof. Ramesh Raskar, NANDA at MIT Media Lab, and Shivani Poddar, Founder & CEO of Wajo.ai, for a conversation on the emerging world of personal AI agents—AI systems that can represent individuals, maintain context, interact with services, and increasingly communicate and coordinate with other agents.
The discussion will examine different approaches now emerging around the world, including India’s DigiDoot initiative (digidoot.in) and efforts in Boston to develop AI agents for residents. We will explore how these approaches differ in architecture, governance, identity, trust, and deployment—and what they reveal about the future of citizen- and user-controlled AI.
We will also discuss how startups, businesses, researchers, and public institutions can participate in this emerging ecosystem. Key questions include: How should personal agents discover and communicate with one another? How can agents from different providers interoperate? Who controls identity, memory, permissions, and data? What research problems remain unsolved? And what infrastructure will be required when individuals begin using multiple personal agents that must work together across organizations and services?
The session is intended as a high-level, open discussion for researchers, entrepreneurs, builders, policymakers, and anyone interested in the next generation of personal AI.
About NANDA at MIT Media Lab
NANDA is an MIT-led research initiative focused on the infrastructure needed for an open Internet of AI agents. Its goal is to make it possible for independently developed agents—personal agents, business agents, government agents, and specialized service agents—to discover one another, establish identity and trust, communicate across organizational boundaries, and act with clear permissions and accountability.
NANDA is developing open infrastructure for this emerging agentic web, including NANDA Index for agent discovery and resolution, NandaTown as a test environment for interoperable agents, and research on identity, delegation, governance, safety, and multi-agent coordination. The project asks a foundational question: if billions of AI agents are created by different companies and institutions, what is the open infrastructure that allows them to work together rather than remain inside closed platforms?
NANDA is also working with public-sector initiatives, including DigiDoot in India, to explore how personal and citizen agents could interact with government services, businesses, and other agents while preserving user control, interoperability, and accountability.
About Wajo
Wajo.ai is building personal AI action agents that go beyond answering questions to completing real-world tasks on a user’s behalf. Its flagship agent, Fo, can communicate over email, chat, and phone, coordinate with people and businesses, and take authorized actions such as bookings and purchases. Founded by Shivani Poddar, Wajo is focused on making capable personal agents accessible to everyday users and exploring how such agents can operate across services, organizations, and eventually with other personal agents.