Building real AI to make a difference

Want to understand the huge, industry-wide demand for next-generation AI agents? The human brain provides a handy reference:?

The average adult makes up to 35,000 decisions every day. Of course, no one could handle weighing so many decisions one by one, but fortunately, our subconscious mind handles roughly 95% of those mostly minor calls.

That still leaves over 1,500 decisions for your conscious brain. Every day.

Enter AI agents—which, as envisioned, can serve a subconscious brain for your work life, handling low-level decisions so you can concentrate on the more important stuff. Without being explicitly told what actions to perform, an AI agent can query multiple sources of information, ask other specialized AI bots to perform related tasks, and present the results to its human bosses.

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But not many AI agents today perform as advertised—the marketplace hype has overstated their readiness by a wide margin. As Murali Swaminathan, chief technology officer at Freshworks, explains in Dan Tynan’s latest report on The Works, truly agentic AI solutions require three foundational capabilities:?

• Brain: A reasoning core powered by LLMs that allows it to analyze context, solve problems, and devise strategies.
• Memory: Agents need short-term memory to keep track of ongoing tasks and long-term knowledge for personalization and continuous improvement.
• Actions: The ability to execute tasks via APIs and automation and to adjust dynamically based on real-time feedback.?

While only a small percentage of organizations already have agentic frameworks, that number will climb rapidly in the next year—starting with relatively simple deployments, such as time-off approvals, questions around refund policies, and tracking order status, says Swaminathan. Eventually, enterprises will adopt a multi-agent framework integrated into mission-critical business systems.

AI agents also need to meet other criteria and standards to deliver business value, and companies are getting creative in developing good ones. As Tynan reports, Moody’s is using VR scenarios to refine the scope of work of its planned AI agents.?

Check out the full story in The Works.?