Token Resistance: Overcoming Fear And Doubt In The AI Agent Era

We’re hearing a lot these days about “agentic transformation.” What exactly is that? Surveys show it is still in its formative stages, and needs to go well beyond the concept of simply being personal assistants.

Tellingly, many organizations are struggling with the concept. At this point, only about 15% of 501 executives surveyed by Deloitte report their companies have developed what may be called “scaled, orchestrated, multi-agent adoption.”

Agentic AI is still in the trial stages, with 43% are expanding their use of agents, and 42% testing small numbers of AI agents, the survey shows. Where scaling is happening, it is more in “lower-risk, repeatable use cases with near-term return on investment,” mainly in areas such as customer service, IT, and engineering, the survey’s authors report.

Nearly two-thirds say their organizations are “reevaluating their business model because of advances in agentic AI,” the survey also shows. “Agentic AI is forcing leaders to ask themselves a fundamental question: Will their business models remain valid when intelligent agents can reshape a business’s cost structure and the role of humans in value creation?”

Agentic transformation in the business has implications far beyond simply employing agents as personal assistants. “Every workflow, every business process that you have will actually get rethought with agents,” predicted Jeetu Patel, president and chief product officer of Cisco, in a recent discussion on CXOtalk, hosted by Michael Krigsman.

Cisco itself has a stated goal to have 70% of its products written entirely with AI by the end of 2027. However, tokens will stay scarce, and there are concerns about who answers for an agent’s actions, Patel cautioned. The issue getting in the way is the complications and unexpected costs involved in deploying and using agents, he believes. “Not everyone wants to go out and have brain surgery done before they can actually start using agents.”