In late 2022, ChatGPT burst onto the scene, and the last two years saw generative artificial intelligence (AI) dominate the discourse in the tech industry. Industry experts say 2025 will be the year of Agentic AI. Unlike generative AI, which relies on user prompts to provide answers, images, or other outputs, Agentic AI makes decisions and executes them. It gets the work done.
A McKinsey report last year described “agentic” systems as digital systems that can independently interact in a dynamic world. The management consulting firm believes that AI agents eventually could act as skilled virtual coworkers, working with humans in a seamless and natural manner. A virtual assistant, for example, could plan and book a complex personalized travel itinerary, handling logistics across multiple travel platforms. Using everyday language, an engineer could describe a new software feature to a programmer agent, which would then code, test, iterate, and deploy the tool it helped create.
"Maintaining a workforce generates significant direct and indirect expenses for businesses, which, while essential for operations, also contribute to the broader economic health of societies. However, if companies can reduce these costs by 40% by replacing human workers with AI agents—who are cheaper, easier to manage, and capable of continuous improvement—they will likely pursue this option, regardless of long-term societal impacts," said a report by HFS research in October last year.
"While this shift boosts corporate efficiency, it risks job displacement, inequality, and social unrest. It fundamentally reshapes how organizations function and communicate, potentially destabilizing businesses and society," it added.
Take for example fraud prevention in the BFSI sector. If a credit card transaction exceeds a certain threshold or occurs in a different country, it triggers an alert. A human fraud analyst then reviews the flagged activity, often requiring hours or days to assess whether the transaction is fraudulent.
However, an agentic AI system can autonomously monitor millions of transactions simultaneously. Unlike rule-based systems, it identifies subtle and complex patterns of fraudulent behavior, such as cross-account manipulations or coordinated attacks, which would be nearly impossible for humans to detect.
“We believe that, in 2025, we may see the first AI agents “join the workforce” and materially change the output of companies,” Sam Altman, the CEO of ChatGPT maker OpenAI said earlier this week in a blog.
PwC estimates Agentic AI could add $2.6 to #4.4 trillion annually to the global GDP by 2030.
Shaping the Future
A phrase currently on the lips of every genAI provider is ‘agentic AI’. Though still in its early stages, companies like Microsoft are working on ‘orchestrator’ bots to manage multiple autonomous agents and ensure their seamless operation.
Harshul Asnani, president of the Europe business at IT services company Tech Mahindra reportedly told Raconteur he believes next year will be a pivotal moment for agentic AI. “ It will be driven by advances in accessibility, affordability and integration,” Asnani adds. “AI’s ability to automate decision-making processes will enable faster and more precise responses to dynamic market demands.”
He added that over the course of 2025, agentic AI’s capabilities– such as personalised customer engagement in retail and predictive analytics in finance will become an everyday operational necessity.
“We’re seeing a real pivot towards business leaders wanting to make more real-time decisions – or close to real-time decisions. It’s not just about replacing what humans were doing before by automating processes, it’s also about being able to look over huge volumes of data that are coming in quickly and serve suggestions to the user,” said Bob de Caux, former head of AI at the heavy industries software enterprise IFS, to Raconteur.
A Glimpse Ahead
However, NVDIA CEO Jenson Huang in an AI Summit held last November in Japan said none of these agents can do 100 percent of anybody’s job. However, all of these agents will be able to do 50 percent of one's work; claiming this is a great achievement.
“Instead of thinking about AI as replacing the work of 50 percent of people, you should think AI will do 50 percent of the work for 100 percent of the people,” he concluded.
SoftBank Group CEO Masayoshi Son joined Huang at the AI Summit, emphasizing the potential of personal AI agents beyond digital labor.
Son envisions AI agents tracking health and education to offer optimized advice, like acting as personal tutors by monitoring reading habits. The idea extends to AI companions or digital twins, providing hyper-personalized interactions.
“I’m excited about enterprise AI agents, but personal agents will also become accessible to everyone,” he said. “ They will help plan trips, education, and more. They will follow you throughout your life.”
As AI improves our ability to automate daily chores, the question that remains to be answered is how it will impact jobs. A Goldman Sachs report from 2023 ominously cautioned that 300 million jobs could be lost or degraded due to AI. However, another report by the bank last year said that AI may have led to a net positive impact on employment.
“There have been some layoff announcements attributed to generative AI, but for the most part it seems like a very, very small share – less than 20,000 of all layoffs generated in the economy, which comes down to less than 0.1% of total job separations. So AI hasn’t resulted in any significant job loss yet,” it said.
