From MS-DOS to the agentic OS: a conversation with Temporal CEO Samar Abbas

Samar Abbas, co-founder and CEO of Temporal, draws an analogy between the current state of AI agents and the early MS-DOS era of computing, emphasizing the democratization and potential of AI akin to the evolution of personal computing. Reflecting on his own journey from programming in Pakistan to building distributed systems for major tech companies, Abbas discusses the parallels between early computing architectures and modern AI systems, noting the need for robust sandboxes and distributed frameworks as AI evolves. He highlights the security challenges inherent in deploying AI agents, citing the risks of running sensitive data on unsecured machines, and suggests a future shift towards centralized, secure environments to manage these agents. Abbas envisions a future where AI agents will work alongside human employees, resulting in a dynamic, elastic workforce and necessitating new tools and frameworks to address the complexities of distributed systems and state management. The conversation underscores the transformative impact of AI on organizational structures and the pressing need to develop novel system primitives to accommodate the massive scale of future AI applications.