THE NEXT CRITICAL FRONTIER: ARE WE READY FOR AUTONOMOUS AI?

THE NEXT WAVE OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE DOESN'T WAIT FOR YOUR PROMPTS. IT WATCHES, DECIDES AND ACTS ON ITS OWN. HERE'S BREAKING DOWN THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN TODAY'S AI AND TOMORROW'S AGENTIC SYSTEMSAND WHAT MAY GO WRONG WHEN AI AGENTS GO ROGUE.

- By TIANA CLINE

Meet agentic Al-the autonomous evolution of artificial intelligence that's already transforming how businesses operate. Unlike the chatbots and image or video models that sparked the generative AI revolution, these systems don't just create content when prompted. They independently monitor situations, make decisions and take actions across multiple systems without human intervention.

Regular AI tools need you to tell them exactly what to do every time. Agentic AI is a little different. "There will be as many agents as there are business processes. And there is an enormous amount of business processes in the world," says Richard Riley, General Manager, low-code and agent platforms, at Microsoft. "Think of AI agents like a football team. You don't want eleven goalkeepers.

You need specialists in different positions who understand their role but can seamlessly work together." This blend of personal AI assistants and autonomous agents represents a massive shift in how organizations will operate going forward. We're not heading toward a future with a handful of all-purpose AIs but rather an ecosystem of specialized agentic AI systems. Each AI agent will handle a specific task while collaborating with others. An AI agent designed to detect fraudulent transactions needs different capabilities than one scheduling maintenance or providing customer support. This specialization makes perfect sense but creates a new challenge: how do we manage dozens or even hundreds of specialized agents without creating digital chaos?