Before anybody has had a chance to adjust fully to the introduction of generative AI (artificial intelligence), there’s already a new version available. The next iteration is Agentic AI. This new type of AI can “think” for you. It can make decisions and take actions, presumably based on what you, or millions of other people like you, already decided. In this way, automating or delegating certain kinds of work is at a new level.
While attending a workshop last month, one of the guest speakers shared his insights about AI. In particular, he spoke about agentic AI and the enormous potential. He used an example of using Agentic AI in his email inbox to automatically reply to emails. This, he said, would save him enormous amounts of time and effort. He then took it a step further to speculate on the new future of job interviews. In time, we can all just send our “agents” to do the interviews for us. Undoubtedly, an HR “agent” will administer the interview. At a certain juncture, you have to wonder what’s the point… and will we eventually lay around all day vegetating and decaying while our “agents” live in the world for us?
I posed my own scenario to the guest speaker. What would happen if his agentic AI email replies were answered by another agentic AI. How would either recipient know what had transpired if each side was being answered by the “agents”? Would this even count as a conversation happening? I already have a hard time retaining information from dozens of emails I receive and respond to daily. If agentic AI responded automatically, I feel I would retain even less because I wouldn’t be doing the actions.
While these scenarios may seem fantastical, creepy, or exciting, depending on your viewpoint, some of these changes are here. Last week I interviewed 6 students for a new coop posting. Two of my colleagues joined me. Though not confirmed, we all suspected that two of the students were using some form of AI to answer the interview questions. A third student invited his AI app as a guest to the interview. Needless to say, I didn’t admit the unwanted guest.
The AI interviews felt long. Answers were long and repetitive. Probably the worst part was that we didn’t learn anything about these students. We didn’t hire any of them.