Autonomous AI agents may be available to S'pore firms by 2025

They can think and work on their own, putting them ahead of regular AI agents

- Krist Boo

Artificial intelligence (AI) has gone up another notch with the development of what are called autonomous AI agents.

These virtual assistants can in effect think for themselves and work on their own, putting them well ahead of AI agents such as chatbots, which often need a person to tell them what to do at every step.

An interaction on communication tool Slack featuring an imaginary cake shop shows their potential.

The shop owner told a Salesforce digital assistant about a significant challenge: Customers often request personalised birthday cakes, which puts a huge strain on staff trying to keep up with demand.

The digital assistant responded by asking about customer behaviours and if they also inquired about delivery, what an acceptable waiting time would be, and if a human should take over such requests when orders exceed 15 cakes.

The aim of the exercise is to help design an autonomous AI agent that will eventually take over the handling of customer requests for cake personalisations without troubling bakery staff, who can get on with making the actual cakes.

Many agents along these lines made their debut in various software companies in September and are in trial phases, with broader availability expected in early 2025.

These new AI agents can make decisions and take action based on what they know and what they are designed to achieve.

They essentially break down big projects into smaller tasks and tackle them one by one, getting better as they learn from what works and what does not.

They would also coordinate with human staff or specialised agents from inventory, marketing and sales departments to address more complex customer inquiries.

WHAT AUTONOMOUS AI AGENTS DO THAT CURRENT GENERATIVE AI DOESN'T