Will Businesses Need An ‘Agent Resources’ Department Soon?

If AI agents outnumber human workers, it would lead to the need for an “Agent Resources” department to manage roles, collaboration, and performance effectively.

The past few months have been the “hot summer of agents.” Just as the hype around Large Language Models was starting to wind down, agents created a new hype cycle of their own, quickly moving from novel concepts into practical, commercially available software.

Looking at agents’ potential to automate even more complex tasks that involve exceptions and uncertainty, businesses will soon employ more agents than employees. While that sounds like an overly optimistic marketing phrase, it is much less far-fetched than it seems. I have recently researched the latest developments on agents in preparation for developing two courses with LinkedIn Learning, and once you realize the potential, your mind starts racing…

A Refresh on AI Agents

Agents are software components that can make decisions under uncertainty based on defined objectives and interact with their environment. 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.

Parallel Comparisons Between Agents and Humans

Software vendors embed agent capabilities in their business applications and technology platforms, providing professional developers and power users access to these new capabilities. This will enable an “agent sprawl” across the enterprise, similar to a hiring spree known for traditional roles people perform.

We can draw parallel comparisons between human workers and agents in any business along six aspects: roles, knowledge, rules, rewards, collaboration, and organization.[…]

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