Building deterministic security for multi-agent AI workflows | David Gildea (Druva)
David Gildea has learned that traditional security models collapse when AI agents start delegating tasks to 50 or 60 other agents in enterprise workflows. As VP of Product for AI at Druva, he's building deterministic security harnesses that solve the authentication nightmare of multi-agent systems while maintaining the autonomous capabilities that make AI valuable.
David explains why MCP specifications gained faster enterprise adoption than A2A despite having weaker security features, telling Ravin how his team is addressing authentication gaps through integration with existing identity management systems like Okta. He shares Druva's approach to wrapping AI agents in security frameworks that require human approval for high-risk actions while learning from user behavior to reduce approval friction over time.
He also covers Druva's evolution from custom RAG systems to AWS Bedrock Knowledge Bases, demonstrating how to build knowing that components will be replaced by better solutions.
Topics discussed:
Multi-agent workflow security challenges with 50+ agent delegation chains
MCP specification adoption advantages over A2A for enterprise authentication
Deterministic security harnesses wrapping non-deterministic AI agent behaviors
Identity management complexity when agents impersonate human users in enterprise systems
Human-in-the-loop scaling problems and supervisor agent solutions for authorization
AI-first capability layers replacing traditional API structures for agent interactions
Hyper-personalization learning from individual user behavior patterns over time
Objective-based chat interfaces eliminating traditional software navigation complexity
Building replaceable AI components while maintaining development velocity and learning
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Building AI agents that learn from feedback: BigPanda's drag-and-drop system | Alexander Page
The fastest path to production AI isn't perfect architecture, according to Alexander Page. It's customer validation. In his former role of Principal AI Architect at BigPanda, he transformed an LLM-based prototype into "Biggy," an AI system for critical incident management. BigPanda moved beyond basic semantic search to build agentic integrations with ServiceNow and Jira, creating AI that understands organizational context and learns from incident history while helping with the entire lifecycle from detection through post-incident documentation.
Alexander also gives Ravin BigPanda's framework for measuring AI agent performance when traditional accuracy metrics fall short: combine user feedback with visibility into agent decision-making, allowing operators to drag-and-drop incorrect tool calls or sequence errors. He reveals how they encode this feedback into vector databases that influence future agent behavior, creating systems that genuinely improve over time.
Topics discussed:
LLM accessibility compared to traditional ML development barriers
Fortune 500 IT incident management across 10-30 monitoring tools
Building Biggy, an AI agent for incident analysis and resolution
Customer-driven development methodology with real data prototyping
Agentic integrations with ServiceNow and Jira for organizational context
Moving beyond semantic search to structured system queries
AI agent performance evaluation when accuracy is subjective
User feedback mechanisms for correcting agent tool calls and sequences
Encoding corrections into vector databases for behavior improvement
Sensory data requirements for human-level AI reasoning
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From 14 to 14,000 patients: How UCHealth scales healthcare with AI | Richard Zane (UCHealth)
UCHealth’s healthcare AI methodology currently enables 1 nurse to monitor 14 fall-risk patients, with plans to scale to 140, then 1,400 through computer vision and predictive analytics. Instead of exhausting pilots, they deploy in phases: test, prove, optimize, then scale. This has created a system that prioritizes force multiplication of current staff rather than replacing them, enabling healthcare professionals to work at the top of their scope.
Richard Zane, Chief Innovation Officer also tells Ravin how their computational linguistics system automatically categorizes thousands of chest X-ray incidental findings into risk levels and manages closed-loop follow-up communication, ensuring critical findings don't fall through administrative cracks. Richard's three-part evaluation framework for technology partners — subject matter expertise, technical deep dive, and financial viability — helps them avoid the startup graveyard.
Topics discussed:
UCHealth's phase deployment methodology: test, prove, optimize, scale
Force multiplication strategy enabling 1 nurse to monitor 14+ patients
Computational linguistics for automating incidental findings
Three-part startup evaluation: subject matter, technical, and financial assessment
FDA regulatory challenges with learning algorithms in healthcare AI
Problem-first approach versus solution-seeking in healthcare AI adoption
Cultural alignment and operational cadence in multi-year technology partnerships
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How construction companies can leverage AI at scale | Dan Williamson
The construction industry sits on goldmines of unstructured data that could revolutionize how buildings get built. From thousands of contracts to communication logs spanning 12-36 month building cycles, Dan Williamson, Director of Artificial Intelligence at Ryan Companies US, says all that data remains largely untapped.
Dan walks Ravin through how Ryan is building AI systems to unlock this data, from contract risk analysis to robots doing reality capture on job sites. But the real challenge is organizational. Getting trade workers who've operated the same way for decades to embrace robotic assistants requires finding business evangelists willing to co-create change rather than having it imposed from above.
Topics discussed:
Building enterprise AI strategy in traditional construction and real estate industries
Leveraging unstructured data from contracts, communications, and building drawings
Finding business evangelists to co-create change rather than imposing technology top-down
Deploying robots on job sites for reality capture and progress tracking
Processing hundreds of thousands of leases and construction contracts with AI
Transforming construction drawings from unstructured data into actionable insights
Managing 60+ contracts per project across 100-250 annual construction projects
Automating safety risk assessment through job site communication analysis
Replacing manual data entry with AI-powered construction workflow applications
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Datadog's Diamond Bishop on Building Production AI Agents That Handle Critical Incidents
What happens when you build AI agents trusted enough to handle production incidents while engineers sleep? At Datadog, it sparked a fundamental rethink of how enterprise AI systems earn developer trust in critical infrastructure environments.
Diamond Bishop, Director of Eng/AI, outlines for Ravin how their Bits AI initiative evolved from basic log analysis to sophisticated incident response agents. By focusing first on root cause identification rather than full automation, they're delivering immediate value while building the confidence needed for deeper integration.
But that's just one part of Datadog's systematic approach. From adopting Anthropic's MCP standard for tool interoperability to implementing multi-modal foundation model strategies, they're creating AI systems that can evolve with rapidly improving underlying technologies while maintaining enterprise reliability standards.
Topics discussed:
Defining AI agents as systems with control flow autonomy rather than simple workflow automation or chatbot interfaces.
Building enterprise trust in AI agents through precision-focused evaluation systems that measure performance across specific incident scenarios.
Implementing root cause identification agents that diagnose production issues before engineers wake up during critical outages.
Adopting Anthropic's MCP standard for tool interoperability to enable seamless integration across different agent platforms and environments.
Using LLM-as-judge evaluation methods combined with human alignment scoring to continuously improve agent reliability and performance.
Managing multi-modal foundation model strategies that allow switching between OpenAI, Anthropic, and open-source models based on tasks.
Balancing organizational AI adoption through decentralized experimentation with centralized procurement standards and security compliance oversight.
Developing LLM observability products that cluster errors and provide visibility into token usage and model performance.
Navigating the bitter lesson principle by building evaluation frameworks that can quickly test new foundation models.
Predicting timeline and bottlenecks for AGI development based on current reasoning limitations and architectural research needs.
Welcome to The AI Adoption Playbook—where we explore real-world AI implementations at leading enterprises. Join host Ravin Thambapillai, CEO of Credal.ai, as he unpacks the technical challenges, architectural decisions, and deployment strategies shaping successful AI adoption. Each episode dives deep into concrete use cases with the engineers and ML platform teams making enterprise AI work at scale. Whether you’re building internal AI tools or leading GenAI initiatives, you’ll find actionable insights for moving from proof-of-concept to production.