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Technology services giant Capgemini said that by 2025, artificial intelligence-driven agents will be able to work together and solve tasks in so-called “multi-agent artificial intelligence” systems.
Capgemini says such a system requires a set of agents that work together to solve tasks in a decentralized and collaborative manner.
Pascal Brier, the company's chief innovation officer, told CNBC that the company has “seen some companies discussing these agent technologies.”
He added that applications using multiple autonomous agents “is really something we should be looking forward to next year.”
Capgemini defines AI agents as “technology designed to operate independently, plan, reflect, pursue higher-level goals, and execute complex workflows with minimal or limited direct human supervision”—essentially, AI agents work behind the scenes Work and complete tasks on your behalf.
Brill said the United States is further along the road to realizing this technology, while Europe is lagging behind.
In a new research report released on Monday titled “Harnessing the Value of Generative AI,” Capgemini notes that the vast majority of companies surveyed (82%) plan to integrate AI agents within one to three years, while only 7% of companies have no plan.
The study is based on a survey of more than 1,100 companies with revenues of $1 billion or more.
Brier said there are two types of so-called artificial intelligence agents: personal agents that perform tasks on your behalf, and multi-agent technology or “agent-to-agent conversations.”
For example, an AI agency focused on marketing that is creating an advertising campaign for an organization operating in Germany could autonomously work with another agency from the same organization’s legal department to ensure it is legally sound.
Capgemini said that unlike traditional artificial intelligence systems that simply follow instructions, these agents “can understand, interpret, adapt and act independently, and can replace human workers in certain tasks.”
Brier told CNBC that the first big wave of artificial intelligence in 2022 (Brier calls it “V1”) is about “understanding what a prompt is and understanding what an LLM (large language model) is.”
Now, “artificial intelligence and generative AI are becoming more and more closely aligned, and it’s more about building those knowledge engines, using generative AI to interact with those engines, and using the new concept of agents as surrogates or co-pilots Come find and do things for us,” he said.
According to Capgemini, 71% of organizations expect AI agents to facilitate automation, while 64% expect AI agents to free human workers from repetitive tasks, allowing them to focus on value-added functions such as customer experience .
genAI Adoption Gap
Capgemini said in the report that there is now a fourfold increase in the number of organizations integrating generative AI into some or most of their locations or functions. According to Capgemini, the number of companies adopting generative artificial intelligence will be 6% in 2023, but this year this number has risen to 24%.
However, while business adoption rates are increasing among large companies, smaller companies are yet to experience the same phenomenon.
The report states that 10% of companies with annual revenue of $1 billion to $5 billion are implementing generative artificial intelligence. For companies with annual revenue of $20 billion or more, this number increases to 49%.
“Large companies are experimenting with generative AI at a larger scale, so they have more opportunities to measure results and they can do it faster, and they obviously do invest more than smaller companies,” Brier told CNBC.
Results also varied across industries. In aerospace and defense, 88% of organizations have invested in generative AI, while in retail this number drops to 66%.