Microsoft is introducing autonomous artificial intelligence agents, or virtual employees, who can perform tasks such as fielding customer queries and identifying sales opportunities, as the technology sector strives to show investors that the rise of AI can produce must-have products.
The American technology company is offering customers the ability to create their own AI agents, as well as launching 10 commercially available bots that can perform a variety of functions including supply chain management and customer service. .
Early adopters of the Copilot Studio product, launching next month, include blue-chip consulting firm McKinsey, which is building an agent to process new client inquiries by performing tasks such as scheduling follow-up meetings . Other early adopters include law firm Clifford Chance and retailer Pets at Home.
Microsoft is pointing to AI agents, which perform tasks without human intervention, as an example of technology’s ability to increase productivity, a measure of economic efficiency or the amount of output generated by a worker for each hour worked.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, who unveiled the AI agents at a company event in London, said the tool would reduce “drudgery” and increase productivity by freeing up time to perform more valuable tasks.
“These tools are fundamentally changing outsourcing, increasing value and reducing waste,” he said.
Nadella described Copilot Studio, which requires no coding experience from its users, as a “code-free way to be able to create agents.” Microsoft is powering agents with several AI models developed in-house and by OpenAI, the developer of ChatGPT.
Microsoft is also developing an artificial intelligence agent that can carry out transactions on behalf of users. The company’s head of AI, Mustafa Suleyman, He said that he has seen “awesome demos” where the agent makes a purchase independently, but has also suffered “car crash moments” during development. Sulyeman added, however, that an agent with these capabilities will emerge “in quarters, not years.”
When asked about fears about AI’s impact on employment, Charles Lamanna, Microsoft’s corporate vice president, told The Guardian that agents would do away with the “mundane and monotonous” aspects of a job.
“I think it’s much more of a facilitative and empowering tool than anything else,” he said.
Lamanna said the arrival of artificial intelligence tools, such as agents, in the modern office environment is comparable to the arrival of personal computers several decades ago.
“At first, the personal computer didn’t appear on every desk, but eventually it was on every desk because it put so much capability and information at every employee’s fingertips,” he said.
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“We think AI will have the same type of journey. “It is appearing in a subset of departments and processes, but it is only a matter of time until it reaches all parts of an organization.”
Andrew Rogoyski, director of the Institute for Human-Centred AI at the University of Surrey, said AI agents could help tech companies generate returns for investors who strongly back the technology. In June, Goldman Sachs asked whether a $1 trillion investment in AI in the coming years “will ever pay off.”
“AI companies have consumed a lot of investment money and need to generate some returns,” Rogoyski said. “Support agents are a way to show everyday benefits, although how much revenue they will generate is an open question.”
However, he cautioned that agents have been debated as a concept for years, but that “we have yet to offer an agent that is as capable as a human worker.”
