The world of agents is already diverse: Travel agents help us plan dream vacations. Insurance agents (sometimes) test our patience and our faith in humanity. Secret agents [REDACTED]. Literary agents are still working on publishing my first novel…But in the world of business, AI agents are the next hot new tech.

AI has already reshaped the workplace. AI-powered copilots can handle employee inquiries. Recruitment platforms can filter through thousands of résumés. AI tools can populate professional development coursework for employees looking to grow specific skills, and much more. Now as agentic AI solutions begin to emerge, workplace tools are beginning to act independently, make decisions, and execute complex workflows with minimal human input.

What makes an agent? Tech Brew reported last month that many top tech companies such as IBM and Amazon would consider tech that is “able to interact with other tools and plan and execute workflows on their own” as agents.

“These offerings, potentially some of them, they were not possible a few months ago or a year ago,” said Chano Fernandez, co-CEO of the AI-powered recruiting tool Eightfold. “You can decide which ones of them are to augment work in combination with your teams and which ones are not.”

This shift to agentic AI represents a major unlock in workplace technology. While many AI systems and solutions can already help users make better decisions by generating insights and recommendations, they still require humans to complete tasks. But agentic AI can initiate and complete tasks on its own, learning from interactions and adapting to changing conditions without human direction.

‍

Read the full article here.