AI Agents: Making RPA The Cool Kid On The Block Again?

How RPA’s Comeback Will Again Propel The Automation Of IT Landscapes — Powered By Multi-Modal AI Models

2024 has been off to a great start for Generative AI. From new hardware to new models, new opportunities, and new challenges, the first quarter has had a lot to offer; the last five quarters have been a remarkable journey between hype and hope.

After all, AI was headed towards its next winter in the fall of 2022. Back then, it seemed like Robotic Process Automation (RPA) would be the new winner in the enterprise technology stack. Many IT departments and industry observers saw the benefit of automating tasks across siloed systems and brittle integration, which doesn’t rely on clean data and accurate predictions. Instead of moving to the next AI ice age, the industry hit the turbo and went into overdrive, and Generative AI has become the cool kid on the block. But how long will it last?

Enterprise landscapes and IT organizations have not radically changed their approach to adopting innovation within the last 18 months. They are still a fabric of historically grown systems, tools, and processes that are fragmented and challenging to adapt quickly. That is one of the reasons why the media already sees the first signs of the AI hype deflating1. But recent advancements in AI give a glimpse at what’s to come first: agents.

Between Bots and Agents for Process Automation

Agents are software components that can perform relatively complex tasks under uncertainty. That means a user wants their application to perform a task but doesn’t (need to) provide step-by-step instructions on achieving that objective. What characterizes these tasks is that they require more than a straightforward step. The agent must understand and disseminate the request (reason what to do), split it into multiple subtasks (so-called experts), and get and assemble the answers to complete the original objective. Whether a user directly instructs an agent or the application uses agents behind the scenes is secondary.[…]

Der Beitrag AI Agents: Making RPA The Cool Kid On The Block Again? erschien zuerst auf SwissCognitive | AI Ventures, Advisory & Research.