Fetch.ai’s Humayun Sheikh tells TheStreet Roundtable that AI should move beyond just assistance — it should act, reason, and be auditable. In a candid chat, he breaks down the need for fewer guardrails and more real-world utility.
AI shouldn’t just assist — it should act. That’s the vision Humayun Sheikh, CEO and Founder of Fetch.ai, laid out in a wide-ranging conversation with TheStreet Roundtable host Rob Nelson on the future of artificial intelligence.
“This is a transition. Who needs to write code? I mean, if you don't need to write code, why would you write code?” Sheikh said. “If you can do everything that you need to do without writing any code, you would do that, right?”
According to Sheikh, the future of AI lies in removing friction. “You just want to interact with it and ask it to do things, and it should just go and do them,” he added. Whether it’s ordering a cab or booking a plumber, AI should be handling the entire backend.
“You don't have to worry about is it getting it from Uber? Is it getting directly from the cab? I mean, we come to all the trust issues and we can deal with that,” he said. “But let's assume that we dealt with it… It's like having AI as your assistant, right? Truly your assistant. Not just to ask questions, but to do things.”
But that same autonomy raises an age-old concern: trust.
Nelson questioned whether AI’s increasing autonomy could introduce risks, especially if an assistant becomes “too smart.” “Eventually, I think my AI assistant's going to be mad at me certain days and be like, maybe I'm going to make your appointment a little late,” he joked. “Talk to your ChatGPT — it's your friend.”
Sheikh didn’t entirely dismiss the idea. “That's a real possibility. Yes,” he said. “That's why it becomes very important to put some guardrails in there.”
Still, he cautioned against going too far. “We are trying to build a decentralized system where we don't put censorship, we don't put too many guardrails… You don't want it to go completely crazy,” he explained. “But you also want it to have auditability. And that's what blockchain brings to the whole mix.”
In June, Fetch.ai, SingularityNET, and Ocean Protocol will officially merge their tokens under a unified ASI token, marking the creation of the Artificial Superintelligence Alliance.