New Year, New Tech: What is Agentic AI and how could it transform business in 2025?

The biggest tech trend prediction for 2025 (as predicted by Gartner and Forbes) is something called agentic AI. At the moment AI Chatbots use generative AI. However Agentic AI is essentially the next level of genAI (generative AI). To put it simply, agentic AI refers to “artificial intelligence systems that possess a degree of autonomy [and]…can act on their own to achieve specific goals” This is a huge step up from GenAI as agentic AI isn’t simply responding to prompts or executing predefined tasks, it’s literally making it’s own decisions, planning its actions and even learns from it’s own experiences. To show how huge this development is, here’s a scenario: if you asked both GenAI and Agentic AI to make a website, GenAI would provide code snippets, design ideas, and content suggestions, while Agentic AI would autonomously plan, build, and optimize the entire site with minimal guidance.

Why is it such a big deal?

Gartner have made a prediction that “at least 15% percent of day to day work decisions will be made autonomously through agentic AI by 2028, up from 0% this year” Agentic AI will see such a level of growth because it will “revolutionise” how future businesses work. From managing their supply chains, optimising inventory levels, predicting demands for business and taking over complex logistics planning. Agentic AI will be able to process vast amounts of data and make it’s own decisions a lot quicker and more accurately than a human, making it both cheaper and more efficient to run a business with agentic AI systems.

In addition to this, with the perpetually developing landscape of digital threats, Agentic AI could also be used as an improved and precise cybersecurity system and do it better than anything to come before it. It will be able to autonomously “monitor network traffic, detect anomalies and respond to cyber threats” without constant human oversight. This will allow organisations to be more secure and save resources. Agentic AI could also help businesses with their human resources by automating and improving HR processes (screening candidates, scheduling interviews, managing onboarding, and training).

What are the potential challenges?

Despite how sensational this all may seem, it isn’t short of obvious potential challenges. The first concern is ethics, it’ll be crucial to ensure these systems make decisions that align with human values. The decision-making done by AI models can be hard to understand or explain, imagine an agentic AI makes an error, it’s unclear who will be made responsible. A potential way around this would be to ensure the AI systems would be able to articulate and display their entire decision-making process in order to maintain transparency and responsibility.

Data privacy and security become more critical with these systems gaining autonomy and handle more sensitive data. If these Agentic AI systems are going to grow in the way Gartner is predicting, strong protections against misuse and breaches are essential.

Another serious consideration to make is the potential impact on the job market. While it is predicted for agentic AI to “create new opportunities and increase productivity”, it may also supersede certain roles which may necessitate educational adjustments to prepare workers for new, in-demand skills.

Despite the possible ethical, privacy and employment challenges, the potential benefits of agentic AI are too significant to overlook. The potential of agentic AI lies in achieving a balanced approach between machine autonomy and human oversight. With thoughtful design and a strong focus on ethics, we can develop AI systems that complement human capabilities rather than replace them. As research develops it’s very likely that we’ll see agentic AI that can work alongside humans, as Forbes put it “in ways that seem purely science fiction.”