Enterprise hits and misses - are AI agents employees, or not? Are enterprise harnesses ready, and are transfomer loops a security fail?

Lead story - Are agents the equivalent of human employees - and should they be treated like one? 

It's a potent question - and my take may surprise you, at least a little bit. But first, let's have a look at Cath's two part series. We'll start with Treating AI agents like employees doesn't work - here's why! What is the argument in favor of treating AI agents as employees? Cath: 

According to research published by the Harvard Business Review (HBR), leaders assume that anthropomorphizing the technology will make it feel less foreign to employees and will signal their AI ambitions more effectively to stakeholders.

Ahh, but vendors are the ones most eager to blur the lines between agents and humans. Cath is on it, and she explains the reason: 

Emily Rose McRae is a Senior Director Analyst at Gartner. In her view, the notion of treating agents like employees is a concept pushed by vendors in order to 'access to headcount budget.'

Indeed. Alas, AI agents are better at tasks than jobs. But, as Cath explores in Leading human-AI agent workforces - are agent managers the answer?, when you consider an area like first-contact customer support, enough successfully-completed tasks does add up to a department-level efficiency. AI agents are also good, though not perfect, at planning through multi-step workflows. Could they provide a valuable assist to human managers, and reduce the organization-wide management load? No question.