Preparing Ahead for the Unforeseen: Strategies for Businesses in Anticipation of Future Artificial Intelligence Agencies
In May 2024, the technological landscape was transformed with the release of OpenAI's GPT-4o and Microsoft's Copilot + PCs. These advancements mark a significant step towards Agentic AI, an innovative form of artificial intelligence that exhibits true autonomy, perceiving its environment, making decisions, and executing actions to achieve specific goals without constant human intervention.
Agentic AI is characterized by goal-oriented autonomy, contextual understanding, proactive adaptive behavior, complex workflow orchestration, and collaboration with humans. It combines autonomous decision-making with sophisticated reasoning, allowing it to plan, adapt, and optimize complex multi-step workflows in real time within dynamic environments.
As organizations prepare to harness the potential of Agentic AI, here are some steps to consider:
- Develop a clear AI strategy: Identify use cases where Agentic AI can add value by automating complex decision-making and coordination tasks.
- Invest in data infrastructure: Build robust data infrastructure and real-time sensing capabilities to supply Agentic AI systems with accurate environmental inputs.
- Establish human-AI collaboration frameworks: Ensure transparent decision-making, human oversight for high-risk decisions, and trust-building.
- Prioritize continuous monitoring and refinement: Continuously evaluate and refine Agentic AI performance and ethical implications to address risks proactively.
- Train staff for AI literacy and change management: Facilitate smooth integration of Agentic AI into existing workflows.
By pursuing these steps, organizations can reap the benefits of Agentic AI, including autonomous improvements in operational efficiency, proactive problem-solving, and transformations of complex business processes.
However, testing Agentic AI requires a new approach, focusing on interactions with humans' emotions and intentions, beyond just output. Comprehensive logging is essential to make every decision auditable, a change for QA teams who previously worked without detailed debug logs. Scalable scenario-based testing is necessary to evaluate various environments where these agents might operate.
Collaboration across multiple job functions, including product, IT, compliance, customer experience, HR, and marketing, is key to AI's success. Establishing governance and clear escalation paths is crucial to ensure responsible AI behavior. Testing should involve real-world workflows, including multi-step tasks and changes in plans. Users need to understand why AI is taking action, allowing them to review, reverse, or change decisions if needed.
Organizations should also prioritize transparency, user feedback, and responsible design for AI to act as a partner. Gartner predicts that 33% of enterprise software applications will incorporate Agentic AI by 2028, with 15% of day-to-day work decisions expected to be made by Agentic AI by the same year. The Agentic AI market is expected to reach $126.89 billion by 2029.
Rob Mason, CTO at Applause, emphasizes the importance of ensuring high-quality digital experiences as leading brands quickly release Agentic AI applications. Forbes Technology Council, an invitation-only community for world-class CIOs, CTOs, and technology executives, continues to guide organizations in navigating the rapidly evolving AI landscape.
In May 2024, the U.S. Senate also rolled out its new AI policy roadmap, setting the stage for a future where Agentic AI plays a pivotal role in shaping industries and society. Organizations should establish clear success metrics based on business problems they are trying to solve to measure the impact of Agentic AI effectively.
As we move towards a future where Agentic AI becomes an integral part of our lives, it is crucial for organizations to prepare, adapt, and embrace this transformative technology.
Rob Mason, CTO at Applause, prioritizes ensuring high-quality digital experiences as leading brands release Agentic AI applications, recognizing their potential to reap benefits such as autonomous improvements in operational efficiency, proactive problem-solving, and transformations of complex business processes. These advancements in technology, including artificial intelligence and finance, will be key for businesses in the near future, as predicted by Gartner, with 33% of enterprise software applications incorporating Agentic AI by 2028 and 15% of day-to-day work decisions expected to be made by Agentic AI by the same year, contributing to a market size of $126.89 billion by 2029.
