Dive Brief:
- While IT leaders show enthusiasm for AI agents, they worry about the technology’s drawbacks and implementation roadblocks, according to a SnapLogic survey published Wednesday.
- Nearly 85% of decision makers say they trust AI agents to complete tasks better than or equivalent to that of human workers, the survey of 1,000 IT decision-makers found. Around 4 in 5 respondents said they believed IT departments would benefit most from adoption.
- As enterprises look to deploy the technology, concerns are brewing. Data security and privacy worries were the most cited barrier to adoption, followed by legacy technology integration challenges, a lack of employee understanding and AI hallucination fears.
Dive Insight:
This year’s AI flavor is agentic. Technology providers are pushing the technology, and enterprises are interested.
Nearly 80% of IT leaders plan to invest at least $1 million in AI agents this year, according to SnapLogic’s survey. The majority of organizations plan to use that investment to deploy a dozen or more AI agents in the next 12 months.
While the technology has the potential to transform IT operations, other departments are turning to agents too.
Walmart is using an AI agent to help merchants find the cause of supply management issues, executives said during a February earnings call. Accenture’s marketing pros are also using the technology to craft campaigns. Toyota Motor Corporation is using agents to assist in knowledge management.
Analysts have warned that enterprises moving forward on initiatives without a solid governance and security foundation could end poorly.
Gartner has predicted 1 in 4 enterprise breaches will be traced back to AI agent abuse in the next three years. Research firm Forrester expects 3 in 4 enterprises that attempt to build agents will fail this year and end up turning to consultancies for help.
Most organizations are currently still laying the groundwork. Nearly 9 in 10 IT pros say their organization’s tech stack needs upgrades before they could deploy AI agents, a Tray.ai survey found.
Successful AI adoption will require change management practices to address employee behavior.
Around 2 in 5 workers report feeling uncomfortable submitting AI-generated work, with some pointing to the quality of AI-produced work being subpar compared to their own, according to a Pegasystems report. Employees also have concerns about the technology’s reliability, accuracy and transparency.
