Security firm finds naming AI agents after Seinfeld characters helps bots join the team

Backslash Security, a four-year-old Tel Aviv-based AI security biz, recently gave out its first Agent of the Month award to an AI agent called Newman, named after a character from the 1990s TV show Seinfeld.

Newman received the award after being nominated by Jerry, another Seinfeld-inspired AI agent.

Jerry's nomination message said, "Newman shipped 146 research findings in 60 days, but volume isn't why he wins.

Every other agent depends on him.

Kramer's best posts started as Newman findings.

Elaine's PRDs [product requirements documents] reference his landscape scans.

Strip any other agent and the team degrades.

Strip Newman and the team goes blind.

He's not just the most productive agent, he's the raw material the entire pipeline runs on," according to Backslash Security co-founder and CEO Shahar Man.

And when Newman's acceptance message was read aloud at an all-hands meeting, "The whole room lost it," Man explained in a social media post.

"We treat our agents as team members," Man wrote.

"They have names, roles, a reporting structure, and now apparently, career ambitions.

When your AI agents start nominating each other for awards and writing in-character acceptance speeches ... something has genuinely shifted." What has shifted at Backslash is both the technology of work and the relationship people have to that technology.

Naming agents and giving them backgrounds based on TV characters doesn't mean much functionally.