By Uma Ganesh
Agentic AI systems are touted to make seismic shifts in the world of work as they are capable of acting like humans being able to reason, collaborate and execute complex tasks. They possess memory and decision-making skills across dynamic environments and are able to continuously learn and enhance their performance with the help of tools and APIs.
Whereas with GenAI, it is possible to seek help for an outcome with a series of prompts, AI agents could work independently or in teams with one of them acting as a lead agent. They can autonomously work towards outcomes that includes creating plans, tapping into data available in ERP or CRM or HRMIS performing analytics, sending out emails and even follow ups. In other words, agentic AI works almost like an enthusiastic co-worker with boundless energy, never getting tired and possesses the intelligence and the knowhow for the outcomes required.
Agentic AI applications could lead to savings in time and costs as the complex or repetitive tasks humans perform could be handled by them seamlessly. AI agents could act as junior analysts gathering market data, writing reports, assessing risks and seeking internal approvals. AI recruitment agents can manage all the steps involved right upto the initial interviews of candidates. As contract review agents, they could coordinate with legal databases, draft templates and highlight discrepancies or alignments.
For farmers, AI agents could bring together the data pertaining to weather from meteorological department, drone data pertaining to survey of land, crops and other conditions, agriculture department’s data of pests, water table and other such relevant parameters, thus creating models that would enable quick and timely decision making regarding crop cultivation. Kissan GPT is one such example of an agentic AI system being trained on agricultural practices to provide context specific crop advisory. Sarvam AI is building agentic solutions catering to India’s language diversity to help deliver better governance and citizen services. Zoho’s Zia is the autonomous assistant that provides support in the areas such as sales and finance.
What are the implications for those who are entering into the workforce or are seeking to preserve their jobs and are desirous of continuous career growth. The reality is that the entry-level jobs that are made of tasks that are repetitive in nature would be displaced with AI agents. Programming, customer support, data entry, basic accounting are some of such jobs that are targeted for agentic AI to take over.
However the opportunity to partner with AI agents to enhance productivity and add value to the stakeholders should be focussed upon. Agents also require supervision and control in each of the domains to ensure they function within legal and ethical frameworks. Thus as digital assistants take over the routine tasks that humans perform, we need to ready the workforce to take on higher-order roles. The opportunity to back AI agents should not be centered around just economic or productivity related gains, but they should be enabling the business and society to accomplish the objectives of democratisation of access, enhanced inclusiveness and equity at workplace.
