Autonomous Agents: The Future of AI
If you have used an AI chatbot, you have experienced firsthand how convenient it is to have an assistant who can answer any questions instantaneously. Now imagine if that assistant could understand and act on your needs without you telling it what to do — meet autonomous agents or agentic AI.
The Rise of Agentic AI
Although this vision may seem like something out of a sci-fi movie, many companies are working on making agentic AI a reality, with enterprise solutions already being released. Deloitte’s 2025 TMT Predictions report predicts that 25% of companies that use generative AI will launch agentic AI pilots by 2025 and 50% by 2027.
Investments and Growth
Furthermore, the report suggests investors have contributed over $2bn to agentic AI startups over the last two years, with efforts concentrated in the enterprise market. So, with such rapid growth and robust investments, how much will agents impact workers?
What is Agentic AI?
Agentic AI refers to assistants that make decisions independently from human intervention, choosing what actions to take to accomplish a particular goal established by a human. They differ from copilots, which respond to human requests to act.
Challenges and Limitations
Because agentic AI performs independently, the technology must be able to perform tasks reliably all the time — and the technology isn’t quite at the required level yet.
Impact on Workers
The report says an agentic coding engineer, which would still require some human supervision, will be achievable by 2025. As seen in the chart below, a completely agentic coding engineer is so far away that there is no predicted date:
Deloitte
Boosting Productivity
The report also delineates how the impacts of agentic AI could be “enormous” because there are one billion knowledge workers globally and stagnant productivity growth in the US. Productivity had only increased by 0.5% from 2019 to 2023 compared to 0.8% growth from 1987 to 2023.
Conclusion
Agentic AI represents a new frontier for AI. However, the technology is built on pre-existing foundations, including large language models, enterprise applications, the internet, and multimodal capabilities. Ultimately, the report suggests agentic AI will be valuable despite being at an early stage of development and adoption.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: What is agentic AI?
A: Agentic AI refers to assistants that make decisions independently from human intervention, choosing what actions to take to accomplish a particular goal established by a human.
Q: How will agentic AI impact workers?
A: The report suggests that agentic AI will have a significant impact on workers, particularly in areas such as customer support, cybersecurity, and regulatory compliance.
Q: When can we expect to see agentic AI in action?
A: The report predicts that 25% of companies that use generative AI will launch agentic AI pilots by 2025 and 50% by 2027.
Q: What are the challenges and limitations of agentic AI?
A: The technology must be able to perform tasks reliably all the time, which is currently not the case.
