Bear in mind HAL 9000 from “2001: A House Odyssey”? The eerily calm, near-sentient robotic? It was a reliable coworker for the people onboard. Properly, at the least earlier than it turned rogue (extra on that later).
HAL represents one in every of science fiction’s most iconic visions of synthetic intelligence (AI) with autonomy — an AI system that might observe, cause, and act independently to realize its goals.
That is a glimpse of agentic AI in motion. Because the title already provides away, agentic AI has company. Operating on giant language fashions (LLM), it really works with out human prompts. It not solely creates and plans duties however executes them by itself. And all of this isn’t simply sci-fi anymore; it is the following large factor for tech giants. Salesforce deems it “era-worthy,” and McKinsey touts it because the “subsequent frontier of generative AI.”
“The AI brokers market is anticipated to develop at 44.8% CAGR between 2024 and 2030, pushed by technological advances in pure language processing (NLP).”
One notable improvement within the agentic AI breakthrough is that it warps how we’ve considered AI thus far: hand-held instruments that help us. As an alternative, AI brokers are proactive digital coworkers that may simply be reshaping how groups are structured, how employees work together, how duties should be divided, and extra.
This shift additionally raises an unsettling, maybe sinister, query: are so many human employees wanted within the first place?
Backed by information from 3,621 critiques, this text explores how AI brokers are getting used within the office right this moment and what which means for the way forward for work. By inspecting their commonest purposes, utilization patterns, and different insights, we will perceive not simply the place AI is making an affect however the way it’s reshaping staff buildings, decision-making, and the division of labor between people and digital coworkers.
Let’s get into it.
What’s agentic AI and the way does it work?
Let’s start with what agentic AI is.
Agentic AI was first developed within the 2000s when machine studying (ML) fashions allowed brokers to be taught and enhance utilizing giant databases. At present, the agentic AI panorama relies on superior autonomy, enmeshed with an moral and accountable AI-controlled surroundings.
Though we at G2 use the time period AI brokers to seek advice from “software program techniques that may cause, act, and automate autonomously,” that is under no circumstances the one present or accepted definition, explains Matthew Miller, analysis principal at G2.
Largely, AI brokers are autonomous digital employees that use instruments to perform targets. These brokers have the power to recollect throughout duties and altering states, based on BCG.
However what does this appear like in follow? To grasp their affect, let’s study an trade that’s already seeing AI-driven transformation: content material advertising.
The human advertising supervisor assigns the AI agent a imprecise state of affairs: create a weblog submit on the most recent digital advertising traits. The agent then researches for it, submits a graphic design request, drafts a weblog, and phases it on a content material administration system. The supervisor lastly steps in to evaluate it earlier than the agent schedules it for publication. It additionally creates and schedules social media posts for promotions.
Whereas this instance demonstrates the autonomous capabilities of agentic AI, many individuals may surprise how these techniques differ from the AI assistants they’re already acquainted with. In spite of everything, hasn’t AI been serving to with content material creation for a while now? This raises an vital query in regards to the distinction between really agentic techniques and their extra restricted predecessors.
Is agentic AI completely different from chatbots?
Tim Sanders, vice chairman of analysis insights at G2, believes there’s a gradient to agentic AI. “I prefer to name it the Waze-to-Waymo continuum.”
He provides that the entry level to this spectrum is co-pilots or chatbots. And that the highest of this continuum is occupied by “system of brokers.” “Brokers right here, on the highest degree, span throughout techniques and collaborate and ship in your intent and never simply your acknowledged want,” clarifies Tim
Supply: LinkedIn submit by Tim Sanders
He additionally argues that agentic AI is an enormous deal because it solves the supply drawback customers and organizations may face with chatbots and automation, “The supply drawback is that particular person productiveness positive aspects don’t essentially translate into organizational elevated velocity of outcomes.”
For instance, human content material writers may save 30% of their time utilizing writing assistants, however they may squander it on taking a nap, scrolling by means of social media, or attending extra conferences.
As customers of AI brokers — the persona remains to be evolving as sellers experiment with purposes — have begun integrating them into their workflows, sure patterns have emerged. These point out how customers want to make use of these brokers and their likes and dislikes, which in flip exhibits the affect AI brokers have had on work. Let’s focus on them primarily based on person critiques.
Agentic AI in motion: who’s utilizing it, what they suppose, and the affect
To grasp using AI brokers, we analyzed 3,621 critiques made by verified customers worldwide on G2. We discovered that agentic AI is mostly utilized in laptop software program, IT, and companies industries, adopted by monetary companies.
These brokers are additionally extensively accessible and useful for companies of all sizes, not simply giant enterprises.
“AI brokers should not only for the large established firms. In accordance with G2 critiques from the previous 12 months for AI brokers, over half (55%) of critiques are from small companies.”
Matthew Miller
Analysis principal at G2
Moreover, the truth that “AI chatbots”, “AI brokers”, and “chatbots” are the preferred AI classes by way of site visitors on G2 testifies to the rising curiosity in agentic AI amongst customers.
Sentiment evaluation of the AI brokers class
After analyzing 500 person critiques between September 2024 and February 2025, we discover that 87% are constructive, whereas simply 4.6% are damaging. This means important satisfaction ranges and the ensuing adoption of AI brokers, that are nonetheless of their early varieties.
Let’s perceive the person sentiment extra deeply and its implications for each patrons and sellers of AI brokers.
What customers like probably the most
- Ease of use: Customers respect that the software program on this class is intuitive and straightforward to navigate.
- AI capabilities: AI capabilities are a robust level, with customers mentioning their effectiveness.
- Buyer help: Many critiques spotlight glorious customer support and help.
- Effectivity: Customers word that the software program helps automate duties and enhance workflows.
- Integration: Seamless integration with current instruments and platforms is a plus.
- Lowering time to ROI: The time to ROI has decreased from 16.9 months in 2023 to 9.5 months in 2024.
G2 Take
The emphasis on ease of use is a driving think about agentic AI’s adoption. The democratization will speed up its use throughout sectors and capabilities and attain non-technical customers.
Customers additionally worth buyer help, impressing the human-AI collaboration in onboarding and launching agentic AI options.
Stressing the reducing time to ROI, Yukta Rustagi, a market analysis analyst at G2, provides, “This additionally implies that organizations leveraging AI are gaining a aggressive edge by means of effectivity and innovation. It reinforces the idea that AI brokers at the moment are a extra rapid and impactful funding for companies.”
ROI for AI Brokers class (Jan 2023 – Dec 2024)
Supply: G2 Market Analysis
Challenges and what they imply
Customers have highlighted characteristic limitations in AI brokers. However this doesn’t essentially point out performance gaps. As an alternative, the expertise’s infancy involves the fore, revealing that we’re nonetheless creating shared concepts of what agentic techniques ought to accomplish throughout domains.
Options for particular person shoppers may be constructed on normal options that serve a number of wants. Nonetheless, enterprises want specialised options that remedy issues at scale. Thus, AI brokers for bigger firms should goal particular use circumstances akin to coding, stock administration, and lead qualification.
AI brokers current a customization problem, not like that seen with earlier AI makes use of. They’re rising as adaptive techniques that personalize by means of interplay reasonably than configuration. Thus, firms could not must customise AI brokers, that are thought-about digital coworkers, any greater than they customise human colleagues.
Some customers battle with coaching AI fashions, which could hobble adoption and delay the time to ROI. AI brokers, as autonomous options, should want minimal coaching. They need to adapt to customers, not vice versa.
The educational curve will stay steep if customers proceed to suppose within the command-execution paradigm with AI brokers, which function by means of aim delegation and autonomous planning. Each sellers and patrons should reimagine onboarding as a collaborative alignment between people and brokers.
Value considerations amongst some customers point out low market maturity as companies battle to quantify agentic AI worth with out standardized metrics. Sellers have but to generate sufficient case research and predictable use circumstances to construct a stronger enterprise case for AI brokers.
Whereas AI brokers are getting used throughout industries, our evaluation of G2 critiques reveals that buyer expertise is the realm the place their affect is most pronounced. Practically half of the person critiques point out CX-related enhancements, making it a pure focus for understanding the real-world advantages of agentic AI.
Buyer expertise: commonest affect space
Whereas analyzing critiques for AI brokers, we discovered that 217 of them, or 43%, point out buyer expertise, making it arguably the most typical space of affect for firms right this moment.
Echoing the sentiment, Tim believes brokers are probably the most employable in two use circumstances thus far: buyer help and gross sales improvement.
“Buyer help groups at present face excessive backlogs, which agentic techniques can shortly scale back. Gross sales improvement leaders see little draw back to agentic SDRs, given their hard-to-fulfill quotas of lead era, booked conferences, and addition to the pipeline,” he explains.
“Within the subsequent 10 years, AI in CX will scale back the price to serve by an order of magnitude, enabling manufacturers to broaden touchpoints with clients in a approach that has by no means been potential.”
Jason Maynard
Chief expertise officer of AMER and APAC at Zendesk
Matthew has discovered that agentic AI has had the largest affect on the client journey across the consideration section. “Though the readiness of patrons to depend on brokers is rising, buying nonetheless stays a ache level,” he claims.
At the moment, 30% of shoppers would work with an AI agent for quicker service. “We predict that this may enhance because the techniques change into extra dependable and as customers and companies develop extra belief towards the techniques,” he says.
Most constructive critiques on G2 spotlight AI’s effectivity in buyer help and automation. Whereas damaging mentions (4.6%) embrace considerations about AI errors, gradual help response, and lack of customization.
To help our findings on AI brokers use circumstances, we requested two customers how their expertise with AI brokers had been in enhancing buyer expertise, a well-liked use case:
G2 Icons Converse
G2 Icons are our most prolific contributors and energy customers of the G2 platform.
Person 1: Peter Gill, freight dealer
How do you employ AI brokers to reinforce buyer expertise?
We should perceive buyer necessities concerning pickup factors, supply factors, and commodity sorts to supply them with probably the most aggressive charges and high-quality companies.
Earlier, we used to do that manually. Now, utilizing AI-driven chatbots and digital assistants, we will supply prompt responses to buyer inquiries, lowering resistance within the gross sales funnel. Moreover, AI helps us study buyer habits patterns, enabling us to know them higher in order that we will get repeat enterprise from them.
Results of agentic AI interventions:
- Buyer satisfaction scores up by 23%
- Uptick in ticket decision fee by 19%
- Diminished guide work for groups by automating 33% of repetitive inquiries
Person 2: Luca Piccinotti, progress marketer
How do you employ AI brokers to reinforce buyer expertise?
We use AI brokers to research market traits, phase goal audiences, and forecast buyer habits, which in flip helps the event of exact messaging and tailor-made campaigns.
Results of Agentic AI interventions:
- Diminished ticket decision time
- Improved buyer suggestions
At first look, AI’s most rapid affect appears to be on buyer expertise — dealing with help queries, automating duties, and bettering engagement. However what occurs when these identical AI capabilities are turned inward?
Simply as AI is reworking completely different industries, it’s additionally redefining how work will get achieved, how groups collaborate, and what it means to be productive. As AI brokers transfer past buyer help and into core enterprise operations, their function within the office is changing into inconceivable to disregard.
Reimagining work: consultants weigh in
Agentic AI isn’t nearly mere automation however cognitive reallocation. It’s creating a brand new approach to take a look at the division of labor the place people are elevated to higher-order pondering roles.
To grasp this real-world affect, we flip to trade consultants who’ve noticed AI brokers in motion, providing useful insights into how companies are integrating them, the place human oversight remains to be essential, and what expertise will probably be wanted on this AI-driven future.
Right here’s what they need to say:
AI brokers are the always-on teammates
Some peddlers of AI brokers are branding them as digital workers, others as teammates, and others nonetheless as instruments that stand behind customers versus between them, says Matthew.
To this, Tim provides, “They require much less human-in-the-loop efforts than LLM chatbots. We must always consider these brokers as staff members that by no means take day without work, get distracted, or develop unhealthy attitudes.”
Mark Purdy, director of Beacon Thought Management, says AI brokers additionally carry out quite a lot of specialised capabilities. For instance, brokers can collect info from a number of inside databases and exterior information sources, assessing and synthesizing the insights for enterprise analysts, attorneys, scientists, or different information employees.
AI brokers can act as casual sounding boards
AI brokers can perceive completely different enterprise issues and contexts, triggering actions and workflows that scale back the pressure on human employees,” factors out Mark. For instance, AI brokers can assess e mail site visitors from clients or shoppers, mechanically responding to queries or complaints. They will monitor and comply with up on gross sales leads.
“AI brokers can assist human managers and leaders make higher selections by working completely different situations or simulations to point out the outcomes of different programs of motion.”
Mark Purdy
Director of Beacon Thought Management
On this sense, AI brokers can function casual sounding boards for various decision-makers, whether or not on the supervisor or board degree.
Nonetheless, Mark additionally emphasizes that whereas AI brokers can act autonomously, there practically at all times must be some human-in-the-loop factor to keep away from errors or unethical selections.
Human-(nonetheless)-in-the-loop
When requested how organizations should divide duties between brokers and people, Mark says the diploma of human involvement will rely on many components. These embrace the choice’s significance, the diploma of belief within the AI agent’s suggestions, the results of a mistake, and the human employee’s expertise and judgment.
“For instance, there’ll seemingly must be a excessive diploma of human supervision in areas akin to healthcare or protection the place the results of errors by AI brokers could possibly be very important, and possibly much less want in areas akin to customer support or back-office processing,” says Mark.
Echoing the sentiment, Sreelesh Pillai, co-CEO at Zepic, says that the corporate’s AI brokers function independently, mimicking and amplifying human functionality whereas permitting companies to configure human involvement the place needed.
Overworked? AI may simply be the productiveness increase you want
Leandro Perez, CMO for Australia and New Zealand at Salesforce, factors to a productiveness problem dealing with people. “For example, for Australia, the productiveness progress has fallen to thirtieth out of 35 comparable nations,” he says.
“Overworked workers want instruments that assist them work extra effectively.” And that is the place instruments like Agentforce, Salesforce’s agentic AI resolution, come into the image.
Leandro cites the instance of Fisher & Paykel, one in every of Salesforce’s clients, which has saved over 3,300 hours month-to-month by reimagining their processes by means of AI brokers and automation.
“Agentic AI is not nearly effectivity; it’s about unlocking potential with limitless digital labor…you’ll be able to count on to see each worker main or working alongside groups made up of AI brokers and studying to extract most worth from them.”
Leandro Perez
CMO for Australia and New Zealand at Salesforce
Leandro argues that the agentic AI shift isn’t essentially about creating solely new roles however reasonably about evolving current ones. With AI brokers dealing with routine duties, people will change into orchestrators of intelligence.
He emphasizes strategic pondering, empathy, and resilience as expertise that may change into extra vital with the involvement of AI brokers.
CX execs should evolve with AI
In accordance with Jason, CX groups should reskill in the same strategy to advertising groups within the 2010s to scale back the price to serve. “As search and social emerged as dominant channels for demand era, the “technical marketer” turned indispensable: half system integrator, half information analyst, and half advertising strategist,” he says.
CX will see the identical transition with the necessity for technical CX professionals who can design the foundational parts of AI brokers — information, insurance policies, procedures, and techniques that help AI brokers. “They are going to then use qualitative and quantitative information to repeatedly enhance and optimize these techniques,” he says, including that such expertise will command a premium within the job market.
As professionals adapt to this AI-driven shift, their roles will evolve reasonably than disappear. Nonetheless, with AI taking over extra duties, a urgent query emerges: what does this imply for the human workforce?
Is the risk to people actual?
Properly, not likely.
Agentic AI can, in principle, operate autonomously and take over total processes and techniques. However will this integration be on the expense of human employees?
Employee considerations about AI are each justified and misplaced, believes Kate O’Neill, founder and chief tech humanist at KO Insights. “The risk is not that AI will change people wholesale — it is that we would fail to reimagine work in ways in which leverage uniquely human capabilities alongside AI.”
She claims that good firms are already reframing AI from a alternative expertise to an enhancement expertise. “This is not simply semantic gymnastics; it is a basic shift in how we design and deploy these techniques,” she provides.
“The way forward for work is not a zero-sum recreation between people and machines. It is about creating synergies that make each extra succesful, extra productive, and in the end, extra human.”
Kate O’Neill
Founder and chief tech humanist at KO Insights
Kate calls upon AI agent distributors to design their instruments explicitly as human amplifiers, not human replacements. Meaning constructing instruments that improve human judgment, creativity, and emotional intelligence — the very qualities that make us uniquely human.
Stressing synergy, Sreelesh says probably the most thrilling shift is not simply in creating new AI-specific jobs; it is in how AI transforms current roles into their “augmented” variations or the next-strategic evolutions of them.
He predicts that as agentic AI turns into extra frequent, we’ll see customer support representatives change into insight-driven engagement specialists, entrepreneurs change into buyer journey architects, and operations of us change into automation strategists.
On the same word, Jason means that agentic AI will spawn extremely expert jobs unseen in CX thus far. These will deal with designing and creating the foundations that help AI brokers.
He claims that traditionally, human brokers have been requested to be the “glue” throughout techniques and information sources — gathering related information and navigating an internet of backend techniques to resolve issues with orders, merchandise, and companies.
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Nonetheless, right this moment, AI brokers linked to information sources, techniques, and instruments are enabling groups to automate these repetitive steps and deal with monitoring the standard and accuracy of responses, offering judgment on the following steps, and approving actions the place judgment is required.
As agentic AI evolves, each sellers and patrons should implement them in a human-centric approach. Intrinsic motivation, a key driver for workers, can take a success if agentic AI is allowed to take over duties which have offered employees with a way of mastery and function. It’s no extra about ability adaptation however reconstructing an expert identification for employees as work will get divided between them and AI brokers.
Agentic AI can be sure to flatten conventional hierarchies inside organizations. Junior professionals armed with AI brokers can carry out at senior ranges, compressing years-long studying curves into months. This creates unprecedented workforce agility. As well as, senior professionals who’ve historically prided themselves on their info mastery should redefine their model.
The ethics and security hurdles
AI brokers work throughout techniques. They don’t take breaks, go on trip, or want motivation to carry out duties. Ultimately, they’re tireless and timeless. How protected is buyer information with this novel utility of AI? And what ought to a governance framework for agentic AI appear like?
Within the film “2001: A House Odyssey,” the story of the autonomous robotic HAL 9000 takes an ominous flip. It goes rogue, doubting people, blaming them for errors, and disconnecting life help.
The destiny of people with agentic AI is unlikely to be comparable, at the least within the close to future. Earlier than the expertise turns into really autonomous, people should set up tips, examine for potential hallucinations, and defend information.
Agentic AI use: an influence play?
In accordance with Kate, probably the most urgent moral considerations round agentic AI transcend surface-level automation points to basic questions of belief and decision-making authority.
“The core moral problem round Agentic AI is not about algorithms or automation — it is about energy.”
Kate O’Neill
Founder and chief tech humanist of KO Insights
Who controls these selections? How can we guarantee clients retain significant company?
“Each time an AI agent makes a selection, it is basically making a small prediction about human habits and desire. Get sufficient of those micro-decisions flawed, and we’re not simply failing at customer support — we’re undermining human autonomy. The stakes are greater than most firms understand,” warns Kate.
The answer? We want unprecedented ranges of transparency with agentic AI. “Prospects want to know not simply that they are interacting with AI, however how and why these brokers make particular selections,” suggests Kate.
Multi-system hallucinations may be actual
As we progress alongside the agentic AI gradient, brokers will work with one another.
In accordance with Tim, there are a number of dangers to look at for when this occurs: they typically must change credentials to really carry out duties inside a multi-step course of. That would pose safety dangers as not all agentic platforms have the identical degree of trustworthiness.
“Reasoning errors (suppose hallucinations) have exponential affect as they unfold throughout agentic groups,” says Tim. “Consider how statements can get distorted as repeated throughout a series of human beings.”
Agentic options are safe, declare sellers
Responding to those considerations, main AI agent sellers Salesforce and Zendesk declare their options characteristic safety plug-ins past these historically deployed for AI instruments. They are saying people nonetheless management the wheel, buyer information is protected, and workplaces are metamorphosing into extra linked and productive areas.
Salesforce
“Context is the king for correct, customized AI outputs,” says Leandro. “With out real-world information about what you are promoting and your clients, agent responses are generalized or, worse, depend on hallucinations and guesswork. Information is crucial, however so is its safe and moral dealing with.”
He explains that they developed the Einstein Belief Layer at Salesforce, which secures and anonymizes information to forestall leaks. “Transparency can be constructed into Agentforce. These with digital labor on their groups can simply evaluate the reasoning behind agent outputs and outline the scope of agent obligations in pure language,” he provides.
Zendesk
In Zendesk’s case, the human-in-the-loop method is integral to utilizing agentic AI.
Jason explains the method and says they’ve configurable thresholds that permit human brokers or directors to evaluate and approve AI-generated content material and urged actions.
“Any high-risk motion, like issuing refunds or making account modifications, may be configured to at all times have a human operator evaluate and make sure it,” he provides.
Amplify human potential, not simply automate duties
As for governance round AI brokers, Kate says, “Cease ready for good rules — they will not come. As an alternative, construct governance frameworks that put human outcomes first.”
“Sure, doc your processes. Sure, set up clear accountability. However the true work is creating techniques that amplify human potential reasonably than simply automate human duties.”
“Your ethics board ought to appear like your buyer base, not your govt staff. Carry within the skeptics, the philosophers, the social scientists — and most significantly, representatives from the communities your AI techniques will have an effect on.”
Kate O’Neill
Founder and chief tech humanist at KO Insights
She believes that the businesses that thrive will not be those with probably the most subtle AI — they’re going to be those who constructed probably the most considerate guardrails round it.
AI or human: be taught when to change gears
The important thing ability of the longer term is not writing prompts or managing AI — it is the power to collaborate with AI to resolve more and more advanced challenges, believes Sreelesh.
Marshall McLuhan, a Canadian communications theorist, was prescient in his commentary when he stated, ‘We form our instruments, and thereafter, our instruments form us.”
That is precisely what’s taking place with AI. We have created these instruments to reinforce our capabilities, and now they’re reshaping how we work, suppose, and remedy issues, says Sreelesh. It’s altering how intelligence itself operates throughout organizations.
Having probably the most superior AI will not assure success — what is going to set organizations aside will probably be their means to stability human and synthetic judgment prudently.
This requires creating a strategy to orchestrate human intelligence and feelings into agentic AI-driven decision-making processes. This is not going to solely delight clients however assist improve worker expertise.
With inputs from Yukta Rustagi, Matthew Miller, and Brett Nehls of G2.
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Edited by Supanna Das