Why did early multi-agent autonomous systems like AutoGen initially fail to meet the hype?
Multi-agent systems mapped well to our human understanding of how to organize work amongst ourselves (i.e. delegation, role responsibility, worker-to-worker communication).
But despite being amassing a ton of developer interest and producing some eye-opening demos, enterprises struggled deploying these implementations to production and opted for simpler single-agent approaches instead.
So why did they fail and what can we learn from the experience?
Watch Eric Zhu and I do a retrospective on AutoGen from our times at Microsoft and Microsoft Research in this clip from the latest episode of the Humans of AI Podcast.
In this episode of Humans of AI, I sit down with my friend Eric Zhu to unpack what are the frameworks and architectures powering modern AI products today.
From our times building Semantic Kernel, Autogen, and GraphRAG at Microsoft, we offer a retrospective on the evolution of this space and where we think it'll go in 2026 and beyond.
We dive into how AI systems are actually being built today, why early agent frameworks were brittle, and what’s changing as models, tooling, and abstractions improve. Eric shares insights from hands-on experience building AI systems, including lessons around memory, orchestration, open source, and why building has become dramatically faster than even a few years ago.
We also talk about the human side of all this—how builders should think about careers in AI, avoiding burnout, and navigating a fast-moving field without getting overwhelmed.
Whether you’re an AI engineer, founder, researcher, or just curious about where things are headed, this conversation goes deep into the why behind modern AI systems.
Like a lot of people over the past week, I asked myself that question. After an embarrassingly long time searching, reading X/Reddit and watching TikToks on the subject, I walked away more confused than informed.
What used to be a no-brainer credit card with Bilt 1.0, suddenly became a big-brained endeavor with Bilt 2.0.
Before: “Pay rent, get points.”
Now: “Calculate your spend-to-rent ratio, Use Bilt Cash to offset your rent/mortgage fees (huh?), Choose multiplier tiers, etc...”