Harnessing Agentic AI: balancing trust and collaboration for future success

Agentic AI is a burgeoning technological trend set to deliver up to $450 billion in economic value by 2028. Despite ongoing advancements, only 2% of organizations have achieved full-scale deployment, while trust in agents is declining. Organisations are discovering that AI agents provide the greatest impact when humans actively engage in oversight. As many as 90% of executives consider human involvement in AI-driven workflows beneficial or cost-neutral according to Capgemini's recent report "Rise of Agentic AI: How Trust is the Key to Human-AI Collaboration." Trust and human oversight are pivotal in bridging the gap between intent and readiness, crucial to realizing this economic potential.

While agentic AI is emerging rapidly, most organizations are still in preliminary application stages. Though nearly a quarter of businesses have initiated pilot programs, and a smaller portion (14%) have started implementation, the majority remain in planning phases. This development pace contrasts with executive aspirations; 93% of business leaders anticipate a competitive advantage through AI agents within the next year, though nearly half lack a robust strategy.

"Realising this [economic] value depends on more than just the technology, it requires a comprehensive and strategic transformation across people, processes and systems,” said Franck Greverie, Chief Portfolio & Technology Officer, Head of Global Business Lines, and Group Executive Board Member at Capgemini. “... organisations must remain focused on outcomes, reimagining their processes with an AI-first mindset. Central to this transformation is the need to build trust in AI...

Human oversight remains pivotal as organizations strive to build trust in AI. Transparency is prioritized, especially with trust in autonomous AI agents dipping from 43% to 27% recently. To enhance trust, executives emphasize transparency, decision-making clarity, and ethical safeguards.

The real promise of agentic AI is its potential to address core business challenges by reimagining workflows. Over 60% of enterprises plan to create human-agent teams within the next twelve months, viewing AI agents as collaborative partners rather than tools.

However, a human-AI collaborative approach necessitates organizational restructuring. 70% of companies believe AI agents will require rethinking team and workflow structures. With effective human collaboration, organizations foresee increased engagement in high-value tasks, a rise in creativity, and improved employee satisfaction.

The potential for AI agents to deliver new value includes revenue boosts and cost reductions through semi to fully autonomous implementations. Scaled deployment indicates significantly higher value generation for organisations compared to those that remain exploratory.

Despite these opportunities, AI scalability presents challenges. The report underscores the immature AI infrastructure of many organizations, revealing that only 20% claim to have high data-readiness. Ethical concerns such as privacy issues, algorithmic bias, and insufficient transparency are rampant, with minimal decisive action taken.

To fully harness AI agents, organizations are recommended to transition beyond the hype and towards pragmatic restructuring and balanced integration. Embracing AI agents involves not only leveraging technology but reimagining business models to facilitate synergy between autonomy and human involvement.