AI agents can talk to each other — they just can't think together yet

AI agents can talk to each other now — they just can't understand what the other one is trying to do. That's the problem Cisco's Outshift is trying to solve with a new architectural approach it calls the Internet of Cognition.

The gap is practical: protocols like MCP and A2A let agents exchange messages and identify tools, but they don't share intent or context. Without that, multi-agent systems burn cycles on coordination and can't compound what they learn.

"The bottom line is, we can send messages, but agents do not understand each other, so there is no grounding, negotiation or coordination or common intent," Vijoy Pandey, general manager and senior vice president of Outshift, told VentureBeat. 

The practical impact:

Consider a patient scheduling a specialist appointment. With MCP alone, a symptom assessment agent passes a diagnosis code to a scheduling agent, which finds available appointments. An ...