Three practical reasons to consider AI agents for your organization

NVIDIA co-founder and CEO Jensen Huang said he hopes his organization will grow from 36,000 workers today to 50,000 workers and 100 million AI agents. I call this new mix of human and digital workers the hybrid organization.

Whether you work at an established company or a startup, 2025 is the year you need to ask yourself: “How many digital workers should I have by the end of 2025?” Every company needs to decide this because 2024 was the year of AI/generative AI experimentation and 2025 will be the first significant wave of implementation – for the three key reasons below.

Reason 1: Substitution of capital for labor

I am currently analyzing the economics of call center automation with and without generative AI. In this paper, I calculated that for the price of $30 worth of AI “tokens” per day (AI models operate on chunks of words or images called tokens), I can automate the majority of the work of a call center employee. The total salary cost of a call center employee in the United States is approximately $300 per day. This means that for about 10% of a human worker’s salary, I can create a digital worker to do 50% or more of their job, and still have $290 a day left over to automate even more. As with the Industrial Revolution, the AI ​​era is paving the way for a massive substitution of capital for labor. A lot studies have shown this powerful tendency, and every leader must, because of this, carefully examine his own organization.

How big will this trend be? I expect that by 2025, a third or more of companies will deploy labor-saving AI/generative AI at scale in at least one major function. These hybrid organizations will lead the way in cost as they also learn how to create and work optimally with digital workers. Developing new production capacity takes time, so senior managers who have a wait-and-see attitude may find themselves on the wrong side of an experience curve that will be difficult to compete with. I predict that the ability to deploy a truly hybrid organization will get better and better with more volume and transactions. (See Bruce Henderson and BCG classic work on this powerful strategic concept of the experience curve and why first movers can gain a competitive advantage if they apply it rigorously.)

Reason 2: Lower cost of innovation

Chip Hazard, co-founder of Flybridge Ventures, a successful early-stage venture capital firm, said: “With this new wave of AI, startups that previously asked for $5-10 million are now asking for $2-4 million. millions of dollars and use AI to make a difference. » AI, applied well, creates the organizational capacity to do new things. Consider Google’s policy of letting people work on their own innovations one day a week, which has helped them create many new things, including the well-known Google Finance product. AI/Generative AI can help free up the time needed to incubate any type of innovation. (The interested reader can explore an excellent HBR article from 20 years ago at The ambidextrous organization for more thoughts on this ever-present leadership tension between managing today’s business and inventing tomorrow’s business.)

Digital workers can also contribute to the innovation process itself. Big companies like Coke have used AI to collaborate on images and branding, and many academic articles (such as This 1) demonstrate increased innovation using AI, as it is a great collaborator in ideation, simulation and explanation. For example, creating optimal customer profiles, analyzing market trends, establishing detailed marketing execution plans are simple tasks to write, review and improve. This means that hybrid organizations will have a greater capacity for innovation as well as a lower cost of experimentation than traditional companies.

Reason 3: Agile Scalability

As someone who has run large, staff-intensive companies, I know from experience how difficult it is to scale staff up and down in the most efficient and humane way possible. Digital workers and the hybrid organization can offer the promise of massively scalable, higher quality and less volatile services. For example, when getjerry.com, the popular auto insurance and refinancing site, created generative AI tools to help its five million customers via chat and text, it was able to automate all customer questions, except 11%, with greater satisfaction. and an almost instant response. Not only did this create a ROI of $4 million per year for them, but it also provided them with scalability that will allow them to grow 3x or more without adding additional customer service staff. A hybrid organization that uses digital workers to augment tasks with peaks and troughs in demand, such as customer service, contract reviews, etc., will experience better service with less risk.

Key questions to ask today

1. What types of digital workers do I need? To answer this question, I recommend our WINS framework which helps leaders decide where to start with GenAI.
2. Does my organization have the skills needed to “hire” and deploy digital workers? If not, how can I develop this capability in my business?
3. How hybrid will my organization be by the end of next year?

If your answer to the last question is 0%, I think you are on the path to a competitive disadvantage. Companies that embrace hybridization will be able to do things faster, better, at lower cost and with more innovation. Additionally, they will gain valuable experience in this new skill of blending human and digital workers. We are so early in this new world of generative AI and AI that leaders who create the management capacity needed to design, deploy and improve a truly hybrid organization will build a more agile and innovative organization with superior economics.