By 2030, experts warn, the spread of AI “employees” could reshape work for nearly every office worker.
This is the view of leading figures in the software industry. They say so-called artificial intelligence agents have several advantages: they can learn new skills on their own and operate software independently.
They could perform roles ranging from nurse to software developer. Digital workers will be able to respond to emails, organize invoices, handle customer support requests, and manage schedules and calendars. This may happen as company management eliminates administrative staff and expensive technologies.
The work week will last three days.
These cases could become widespread — not least because employers may see AI agents as dream employees. They don’t take lunch breaks, don’t go on vacation, and don’t ask for raises. So executives in some industries may be ready to hire them soon.
In recent months, several companies have announced they are creating artificial intelligence agents — AI employees.
The British publication Daily Mail spoke with Ed Broussard, the CEO of Tomoro.AI, a company focused on artificial intelligence technologies. He said the productivity gains from digital workers could be so large that they would allow for a three-day workweek.
Mr. Broussard, whose company collaborates with OpenAI’s Sam Altman, said we will see rapid progress with AI agents over the next two years.
The issue of medical personnel will finally be resolved.
Recently, Nvidia, a technology company focused on artificial intelligence development, and Hippocratic AI, which specializes in medical technologies, announced a collaboration to create AI agents for healthcare.
Companies hope their new AI nurses will help address medical staff shortages worldwide.
Researchers at Hippocratic AI said digital nurses will be trained “on a vast array of private data, including clinical care protocols, healthcare regulations, drug databases, and more.”
In the USA, more than 1,000 nurses and 100 doctors have protested the use of AI medical workers.
Earlier this month, the software development company Cognition became the first to create an autonomous AI programmer. It’s called Devin. Devin can independently build websites and applications in about 20 minutes. Additionally, Devin can use the Internet to learn new skills.
When it was tasked with going on Reddit and taking orders for website creation, it started collecting payments on its own. This was reported on Twitter by Ethan Mollick, a professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.
Large companies that do not use AI will disappear.
Despite recent, convincing successes in building digital employees, creating a workforce of AI agents is still in its early stages.
However, Mr. Broussard says significant progress will be made over the next two years — progress that he believes will surpass the achievements of the past 75 years. And he is not the only one predicting major changes from AI.
Microsoft founder Bill Gates foresaw the rise of artificial intelligence in his book “The Road Ahead” nearly three decades ago. Now he says digital workers will have a major impact on education and healthcare and will become “the biggest revolution in computer technology.”
Mr. Gates believes AI agents will replace internet search engines and e-commerce sites such as Amazon. Meanwhile, Mr. Broussard suggests that digital assistants will soon take on administrative and research roles across industries like law, investment, and marketing.
“One of the agents we use most often focuses on fact extraction. It specializes in reading large volumes of documents and organizing the facts and useful information into a format that other AI agents can easily read,” said Ed Broussard. According to him, this digital worker can then be used for many business applications: legal document review, investment analysis, customer research, and more.
Ed Broussard also believes that large companies that don’t adopt AI employees won’t survive the next decade.
He predicts AI agents will take over administrative tasks: people would no longer have to search for information, fill out forms, or book hotels. All those functions would be handled by a digital assistant.
“We’ll see completely different ways of working, the emergence of new roles, and organizations shift tasks that typically limit human creativity to AI agents, freeing people up,” the CEO of Tomoro.AI said.
He says AI agents are not yet ready to fully replace people in their jobs. At this stage of AI development, these agents “are likely to be created as capabilities that can be combined for various purposes,” the expert added.
