Turns out, managing bots is just as annoying as managing people
Business leaders are finding that managing AI agents is becoming as complex and time-consuming as managing human employees. Issues such as performance 'rot,' inaccurate outputs, and the need for constant retraining are challenging the promise of increased workplace efficiency.
Why it matters
As organizations increasingly adopt agentic AI, the hidden costs of maintenance and oversight may offset the expected productivity gains.
Getty Images; Alyssa Powell/BI One member of Sumaiya Noor's customer service team is trying to overachieve — and it's causing her some problems. Her AI agent is trained to loop her in when faced with a task it can't handle. However, she's noticed that over time, it tries to solve problems outside its scope, providing inaccurate answers with great confidence, which leads to dissatisfied and angry customers. So every couple of months, Noor said she has to carve out some time from her work to refresh the agent on what it's supposed to do, and train it on more edge cases. "Over the period of time, it gets worse rather than getting better," said Noor, the chief product officer at a UK-based social-impact investment platform who also manages two other AI agents: a junior product manager and an internal "chief of staff."
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