Inference is Turing Post’s way of asking the big questions about AI — and refusing easy answers. Each episode starts with a simple prompt: “When will we…?” – and follows it wherever it leads.
Host Ksenia Se sits down with the people shaping the future firsthand: researchers, founders, engineers, and entrepreneurs. The conversations are candid, sharp, and sometimes surprising – less about polished visions, more about the real work happening behind the scenes.
It’s called Inference for a reason: opinions are great, but we want to connect the dots – between research breakthroughs, business moves, technical hurdles, and shifting ambitions.
If you’re tired of vague futurism and ready for real conversations about what’s coming (and what’s not), this is your feed. Join us – and draw your own inference.
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Inference is Turing Post’s way of asking the big questions about AI — and refusing easy answers. Each episode starts with a simple prompt: “When will we…?” – and follows it wherever it leads.
Host Ksenia Se sits down with the people shaping the future firsthand: researchers, founders, engineers, and entrepreneurs. The conversations are candid, sharp, and sometimes surprising – less about polished visions, more about the real work happening behind the scenes.
It’s called Inference for a reason: opinions are great, but we want to connect the dots – between research breakthroughs, business moves, technical hurdles, and shifting ambitions.
If you’re tired of vague futurism and ready for real conversations about what’s coming (and what’s not), this is your feed. Join us – and draw your own inference.
How to Make AI Actually Do Things | Alex Hancock, Block, Goose, MCP Steering Committee
Inference by Turing Post
24 minutes
4 months ago
How to Make AI Actually Do Things | Alex Hancock, Block, Goose, MCP Steering Committee
Right now, the biggest leap for AI isn’t a bigger model – it’s giving models and agents a way to act. In this episode of Inference, I sit down with Alex Hancock – Senior Software Engineer at Block, core contributor to Goose (the open-source, multi-purpose AI agent), and a member of the Model Context Protocol (MCP) Steering Committee – to talk about the infrastructure that’s quietly powering the next wave of AI.
*We cover:*
– What MCP is – and why it’s exploding in adoption
– How it turns models from “brains in jars” into agents with arms and legs
– The MCP Steering Committee’s push for openness and real governance
– Why SDK parity, registry design, and OAuth 2.1 are make-or-break for developers
– How MCP and A2A fit together – and where they might compete
– Context discovery, context management, and why they’re the hardest problems in agentic AI
– The lessons from Goose on staying model-agnostic in a fast-moving ecosystem
– What this shift means for software development – and for the humans in the loop
Alex also shares his view on the next year of protocol development, why he thinks AGI will arrive incrementally, and how a runner’s mindset shapes his approach to building tools that last.
If you’re building agents, connecting models to the world, or just trying to understand the emerging “protocol layer” of AI, this conversation will give you a front-row seat.
Let’s find out how we’re teaching AI to act – and what’s still missing.
*Did you like the episode? You know the drill:*
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*Guest:*
Alex Hancock, Senior Software Engineer at Block, Goose Maintainer & MCP Steering Committee Member
https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexjhancock/
https://x.com/alexjhancock
https://github.com/block/goose
MCP https://github.com/modelcontextprotocol
Building to Last: A New Governance Model for MCP https://blog.modelcontextprotocol.io/posts/2025-07-31-governance-for-mcp/
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Turing Post is a newsletter about AI's past, present, and future. Publisher Ksenia Se explores how intelligent systems are built – and how they’re changing how we think, work, and live.
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Inference by Turing Post
Inference is Turing Post’s way of asking the big questions about AI — and refusing easy answers. Each episode starts with a simple prompt: “When will we…?” – and follows it wherever it leads.
Host Ksenia Se sits down with the people shaping the future firsthand: researchers, founders, engineers, and entrepreneurs. The conversations are candid, sharp, and sometimes surprising – less about polished visions, more about the real work happening behind the scenes.
It’s called Inference for a reason: opinions are great, but we want to connect the dots – between research breakthroughs, business moves, technical hurdles, and shifting ambitions.
If you’re tired of vague futurism and ready for real conversations about what’s coming (and what’s not), this is your feed. Join us – and draw your own inference.
