Latest news with #RuchirPuri
Yahoo
01-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
AI agents are here. How afraid should workers be of losing their jobs?
At Mobile World Congress, the telecom industry trade show held each March in Barcelona, AI agents were everywhere. Or rather, signs touting AI agents were everywhere. At the Google Cloud stand, telecom execs could watch demos showcasing how easily companies can build custom AI agents. At Microsoft's stand, it was the same story. Qualcomm's highlighted its 'on-device agentic AI.' It was a similar scene in January at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland—where signs pitching tech companies' 'agentic AI' offerings practically obscured the view of the surrounding snowcapped mountains. In fact, almost every place tech companies come to market their wares these days turns into an AI-agent fest. There's simply no buzzier topic in tech and business right now. AI agents are supposed to be what finally delivers AI's long-promised productivity gains. It's still early days, and businesses are being cautious, partly because AI agents carry more risks than other AI products. But if deployment ramps up rapidly, as many analysts expect, AI agents could radically transform how people work—and possibly lead to millions of jobs being cut. But what are AI agents, and is the hype around them deserved? For starters, there is no agreed-upon definition of an AI agent—which is convenient if you want to claim to be selling one. But generally, it's an AI-powered system that can complete tasks using other software tools. These systems have a generative-AI model at their core, but they can do more than the AI model can in isolation. A gen-AI model may be able to suggest an itinerary for an upcoming vacation. An AI agent could do that, too, but then actually make the bookings and reservations for you. This is obviously a more difficult task that involves multiple steps and use of the internet—and, to do well, quite a bit of reasoning. This kind of automation is a perennial C-suite fever dream. Over the past decade, companies embraced 'robotic process automation,' or RPA. This was software that could automate repetitive tasks, such as cutting and pasting between database programs. But traditional RPA systems are inflexible and unable to deal with exceptions, and can usually handle only one narrow task. RPA didn't deliver what businesses wanted, says Amit Zavery, president of business software company ServiceNow, which is betting big on agents. He says agentic AI is different: 'It can be flexible and adapt to how businesses want to operate.' The U.S. market for AI agents is expected to reach $7.6 billion this year, according to Grand View Research, and that figure is growing at 46% annually. But those numbers likely underestimate the total impact. Consultants at McKinsey say AI could eventually unlock as much as $4.4 trillion in annual corporate productivity gains—with much of that coming from agentic AI. For the moment, however, adoption remains nascent. 'The AI-agent discussion is a mix of hype and real technical progress,' says Ruchir Puri, chief scientist of IBM Research. Meanwhile, Craig Le Clair, an analyst at research firm Forrester and the author of Random Acts of Automation, a book about the coming world of AI agents, says there are many 'agent-ish' offerings, but few are truly autonomous agents that can adjust their approach to a task on the fly in response to changing conditions. For now, agents are mostly being used for customer service and resolving internal IT support requests. They're not yet good enough, however, to fully automate tasks like writing and debugging software, Puri says. Because agents can take action, such as managing critical databases and engaging in financial transactions, the stakes are high if things go wrong. Big companies are therefore cautious about embracing the technology. Still, agents are creeping into many domains—from helping onboard new employees to assisting lawyers to find and update language in contracts. In a pilot project, McKinsey built an AI agent using Microsoft's Copilot Studio software that can monitor an email address for incoming project proposals from potential clients. When one arrives in the inbox, the agent automatically assesses the job, estimating the staffing requirements, time to completion, and budget. It even suggests which available consultants should do the job. A human still must check what the agent produces, of course, but the technology has cut the time required to scope out a project from 20 days on average to just two days. 32% Share of workers who believe AI will lead to fewer jobs $7.6 billion Expected U.S. spending on AI agents this yearSources: Pew Research Center; Grand View Research What impact will AI agents have on workers? 'I think it will be really disruptive,' Le Clair says. He knows of one Netherlands-based insurance company that had 15 contractors in Bulgaria helping to process claims-related emails. The contractors determined whether an email was about a new claim or an existing one, and made sure any information, including attachments, was uploaded to the appropriate databases. AI agents now do this work—and the company fired all the Bulgarian contractors. But such cases may be the exception, at least for now. A recent study by two senior Bank for International Settlements advisors found AI agents underwhelming. While able to perform narrow tasks well, 'they lack the self-awareness to know when they have gone wrong and change course in light of evidence,' the researchers wrote. People make mistakes, too, but they're better at spotting and correcting their errors. Of course, AI companies are racing to overcome these limitations. The new wave of reasoning models from the likes of OpenAI, Anthropic, Google's DeepMind, and Chinese startup DeepSeek excel at making step-by-step plans and have some ability to reflect on these plans and make corrections. Adam Evans, the executive vice president heading up Salesforce's AI efforts, says its latest AI agents, released in March, are starting to incorporate some reasoning capabilities. The company is also working on ways to help businesses orchestrate multiple agents to handle more complex tasks. So, while most of our jobs are probably safe for the next year or two, we may all soon find ourselves shouting that old Hollywood shibboleth—'Call my agent!'—to renegotiate our employment contracts. This article appears in the April/May 2025 issue of Fortune with the headline "AI agents are here. How afraid should workers be?" This story was originally featured on
Forbes
29-03-2025
- Science
- Forbes
Next Phase: Intuitive AI That Attempts To Mimic The Human Psyche
Next frontier: automate intuition? getty Can artificial intelligence eventually mimic human intuition? And is that a good thing? Intuition has fueled many a business or personal life decision, and there is plenty of evidence to suggest that it's a fairly powerful and accurate tool. It taps into and selects from a vast wellspring of information in one's brain. As this recent podcast with neuroscientist Joel Pearson illustrates, intuition involves more than just 'tapping into any unconscious information. It's the learned information. So when we go about our lives, our brains processing thousands of things, we're only conscious of a tiny bit of that. We have no idea what our brains processing most of the time.' Intuitive AI – which can sense and respond to many seen and unseen factors – may represent the next phase of the technology. With the advent of machine learning and generative AI, there's been excitement about its productivity potential. The next frontier of AI may be what Ruchir Puri, chief scientist at IBM Research and IBM Fellow, describes as 'emotional AI.' While "human intelligence encompasses multiple dimensions – IQ or intelligence quotient, EQ or emotional quotient, and RQ or relational quotient. So far, AI has primarily only mastered IQ.' 'EQ helps humans understand and manage emotions, while RQ shapes how we build relationships,' Puri explained. "These are the next frontiers for AI development – systems that recognize, interpret and respond to human emotions beyond just sentiment analysis.' Emotional AI may even "become one of the most significant cultural turning points of our time,' he continued. 'Machines capable of understanding, responding to and generating emotions will reshape how society and businesses functions, with AI working alongside humans in a profoundly integrated way.' The IQ of AI will definitely keep growing as well, and "we'll soon see AI with an IQ of 1,000,000, as described by Emmy Award-winning producer Ryan Elam, founder and CEO of LocalEyes Video Production. 'At some point, AI will reach a level of intelligence so far beyond human cognition that it will no longer be comprehensible to us,' Elam predicted. "A machine with an IQ of 1,000,000 wouldn't just solve problems faster; it would perceive and define reality differently. These ultra-intelligent AIs may discover scientific laws we don't even have the cognitive framework to understand, essentially operating as alien minds among us. The challenge won't be building them—it will be figuring out how to interpret their insights." Wrap this into a future in which "our most intimate signals -- heart rate, body temperature, microexpressions, and subtle voice shifts -- are openly accessible,' said Dr. Zulfikar Ramzan, chief technology officer at Point Wild. 'In this world, AI, once celebrated for mastering highly analytical domains like Chess, Go, and even protein folding, can elevate – or wreak havoc upon -- the concept of emotional intelligence.' Most of the required technology already exists, Ramzan continued. 'High-resolution and high-frame-rate cameras, remote photoplethysmography, thermal imaging, radar-based skin conductivity sensing, and sensitive microphones can capture signals that that we once thought private: real-time pupil size, subtle color changes in skin caused by blood flow, microexpressions, skin temperature, sweat gland activity from a distance, voice prosody.' AI can merge these data streams, 'and analyze video, images, and speech to transform ostensibly hidden signals into a cogent narrative about the inner workings of the people around us. We can literally read the room.' Ramzan illustrates how this could work in business settings. 'Imagine negotiating a deal when AI notes your counterpart's pupils widen at a specific price point -- signaling non-verbal interest that could pivot the conversation,' he said. 'Picture delivering a presentation, but getting instant feedback on audience engagement. Suddenly, those who persistently struggle to interpret non-verbal cues are on nearly equal footing to the most preternaturally gifted empathetic, charismatic social chameleons.' Getting to more intuitive or emotional AI requires a more fluid user interface – to the point in which people do not realize they're still talking to machines – but, hopefully, will still be aware they are. 'Too often, AI impresses in carefully curated demos or cherry-picked case studies, but struggles in real-world use," said Anastasia Georgievskaya, founder and CEO of "People end up spending 15 to 20 minutes trying to make it work or even an hour refining prompts just to get a decent result.' This frustration, she continued, "comes from a fundamental limitation: we're trying to communicate highly complex, contextual thoughts through simple text prompts, which just isn't efficient. Our thoughts are richer, more layered than what we can type out, and that gap between what we mean and what AI understands leads to underwhelming results.' Once we move beyond prompting and text commands, 'the real innovation will happen—moving beyond text commands,' said Georgievskaya. 'I see a future where we can leverage neurotechnology to express intent without language. AI that doesn't wait for us to spell things out, but instead picks up on our thoughts, emotions, and context directly, making interactions far more intuitive.' 'Take skincare recommendations. Instead of typing, 'I want something lightweight with vitamin C,' AI could already know,' said Georgievskaya. 'It could sense your emotional reactions, subconscious preferences, even remember which influencer's review you engaged with. It might recognize that you're drawn to certain textures or packaging – without you needing to say a word. Within a few years, AI may no longer ask what we want – it will simply understand.'
