We’ve entered the part of the AI hype cycle where we’re starting to more accurately understand the value and limitations of the tech—which spent much of the last two years basking in the lime light. Move over, Blu-ray disc.
While AI perhaps has longer staying power than Blu-ray, last month Gartner predicted more than 40% of agentic AI projects will be canceled by the end of 2027. The firm cited rising costs, unclear business value, and inadequate risk controls as potential hurdles for the tech.
“I’m not surprised,” said Sam Dorison, co-founder and CEO at ReflexAI, an AI-powered training and quality assurance platform that designs agentic solutions to support human workers rather than replace them. “Where you get impact in professional settings, particularly enterprise settings, is through clarity and clear goals, and if you’re implementing AI, because you think AI can address everything, you do not have clear goals.”
The Gartner report cautions against “misapplying agentic AI in business use cases” warning it can lead to a use case failure. Before procuring or deploying agentic AI in the workplace, it’s important to evaluate if agentic AI is the right solution for the intervention or if something else is more appropriate, according to the report.
“Everytime there’s something new, we’re just so excited about the potential of it and tend to quickly judge it by the wrong things,” said Sagi Eliyahu, cofounder and CEO of Tonkean, an AI orchestration and integration platform.
It’s important to think through the roadmap of an AI project and outline its goals, understand what a vendor is really able to offer to cut through the hype, and work out the business value for the technology, the report recommends. Organizations also need to be equipped with a workforce ready to adopt the solution.
“It is really important to be clear eyed about not just what you want to accomplish, but do you have the team to do it?” Dorison said, adding that it’s not just AI engineers, but also leaders who have experience driving large transformation projects, executive buy-in, and a workforce that’s culturally ready and excited about AI. “A lot of those fundamentals, or things that I would consider to be fundamentals, within a high performing culture get pushed to the side in the sprint to do a new AI thing.”
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Eliyahu pointed out that agentic AI, like other new tech, only works if the tech is the right intervention for the problem.
“There is a false expectation with a lot of organizations, they think they can just parachute those agents in and then things will just happen,” Eliyahu said. “In reality, it’s not different than most technologies, and it’s definitely not different than hiring people. You just have access to very smart [tools that are the] equivalent of people in certain specific ways.”
What’s HR’s role? HR pros aren’t generally considered IT procurement professionals, but they do play a crucial role in helping organizations successfully deploy agentic solutions to the workforce. Dorison noted HR leaders can assume a role in transparent employee communication on the AI transformation, recruiting and hiring an AI-ready workforce, designing L&D programming that train employees and build the culture that’s AI-ready, and lead compliance and governance efforts.
“Clarity of use—and this is something that HR is uniquely positioned to [support]—they need to provide clarity to the workforce,” Dorison said. “If HR teams can say: here’s the red lines, here’s the green lines. If you’re on either side of those, the decision is clear. Here’s your red flags and your green flags. If those pop up, your decision should be mostly clear, but maybe check with your manager. Most things will fall into a way that can be litigated.”
But because most organizations have not outlined a company-wide framework to govern how AI is used, each use case is independently assessed for ROI or risk.
“[HR] can provide guidelines for the entire organization, leadership and teams,” he said. “And they can provide training teams on how to interpret those guidelines.”