Features

According to Gartner, more than 40% of agentic AI projects will be cancelled before the end of next year. One of the main reasons, says the research house, is unclear business value. Organisations are deploying autonomous systems because of FOMO and without defining measurable outcomes. If anything, agents get pointed at whatever is loudest in the organisation, which is often an executive with a preference. “The agent will follow its instructions to the letter,” says Jan van Niekerk, senior vice president: Data and AI strategy at Netsurit.

“If the instructions were never tied to strategy, that obedience is the problem, not the safeguard.” What gets automated in those conditions is what Van Niekerk calls “vanity work”, the visible tasks that show the organisation is “doing” AI without changing what it costs to run.