Dive Temporary:
- Greater than 1 / 4 (27%) of enterprise leaders say agentic AI instruments designed to carry out office capabilities with little human intervention are “overhyped” as the technology rapidly positive factors public consideration, in line with a Workday survey revealed earlier this month.
- The analysis revealed a mix of office attitudes towards the expertise as a rising variety of organizations experiment with it. Whereas three-quarters of respondents had been open to working with AI brokers, solely 30% had been snug with being managed by them. Consolation ranges additionally plummeted when it got here to utilizing AI brokers for important monetary choices, with 4 in 10 people embracing that use case.
- “Many see AI as a transformative power promising societal enhancements, but a robust present of doubt and skepticism persists, starting from job displacement to existential threats,” the report mentioned.
Dive Perception:
The analysis comes as Gartner predicts that greater than 40% of agentic AI projects will be canceled by the tip of 2027, on account of escalating prices, unclear enterprise worth or insufficient danger controls.
“Most agentic AI initiatives proper now are early stage experiments or proof of ideas which might be largely pushed by hype and are sometimes misapplied,” Anushree Verma, a senior director analyst at Gartner, mentioned in a June assertion. “This may blind organizations to the actual price and complexity of deploying AI brokers at scale, stalling initiatives from transferring into manufacturing.”
Many distributors are contributing to the hype by partaking in “agent washing” — the rebranding of present merchandise, akin to AI assistants, robotic course of automation and chatbots, “with out substantial agentic capabilities,” Gartner mentioned.
Workday, one among a rising variety of enterprise software program firms that at the moment are providing AI brokers, mentioned its personal research underscores that whereas the expertise is gaining floor within the office, folks nonetheless need clear boundaries round its use.
“We’re coming into a brand new period of labor the place AI might be an unbelievable companion,” Kathy Pham, vice chairman of AI at Workday, mentioned in a press release. “Constructing belief means being intentional in how AI is used and protecting folks on the middle of each choice.”
Workday’s analysis confirmed widespread curiosity in AI brokers, with 82% of organizations saying they supposed to increase their use of the expertise. Over half (56%) of respondents mentioned they anticipated agentic AI to ship a return on funding inside 12 months.
Prime limitations to adoption embrace considerations associated to bias, information privateness, authorized points and misuse of the expertise, in line with the analysis.
“As organizations progress from leveraging brokers in data-heavy domains akin to IT and expertise growth — and even particular HR capabilities akin to forecasting and scheduling — the actual problem will probably be extending their software into extra delicate areas touching upon human judgment, monetary choices, and authorized intricacies,” the report mentioned.
The research, carried out by Hanover Analysis in Might and June on behalf of Workday, was primarily based on a world survey of two,950 decision-makers and software program implementation leaders.
