The State Of AI Agents: Lots Of Potential … And Confusion
AI agents are getting a lot of buzz. They featured in Forrester’s top 10 emerging technologies for 2024, bagged the keynote spot at Salesforce’s conference, and have allegedly triggered an arms race between OpenAI and big tech companies. What, exactly, are AI agents? Forrester defines AI agents as:
General AI systems trained to act invisibly on behalf of an enterprise or individual, performing tasks, making decisions, and interacting with data or other systems autonomously.
AI agents represent the next iteration of artificial intelligence: not just learning from data, analyzing trends, and making predictions, but also making decisions and acting on them by interacting with other systems. When we were researching AI agents, Craig described them as “AI with arms,” which opens a new realm of use cases and possibilities.
Five Use Cases For AI Agents
Our new report, The State Of AI Agents, 2024, breaks down five use cases for AI agents and their benefit horizons. Use cases vary from employee support (e.g., copilots) to consumer advocacy (e.g., digital doubles). While benefit horizons vary, business-oriented use cases will see adoption and business benefits first, while consumer-oriented use cases will take longer to develop. AI hype is nearing a fever pitch, but the realities of implementation complexity, regulations like the EU AI Act, a confusing vendor landscape that uses “AI agent” to mean different things, and the risks of AI agents going rogue and/or inadvertently creating harm will temper adoption timelines and business benefits alike.
Although AI agents are still nascent, they present new opportunities for businesses to streamline operations, engage employees, and better understand and interact with customers. But they also require businesses to be strategic in what use cases they adopt and how they prepare for AI agent proliferation. To learn more, check out our new report, stay tuned for more research on AI agents, and set up a guidance session.