Agentic AI: Moving Beyond Spellcheck-Level Automation
"AI will be as ubiquitous as spellcheck"- That's kind of right.
It’s tempting to say AI will soon be as ubiquitous as spellcheck. And in many ways, that’s true—text summarizers, code assistants, and data analysis tools are becoming baseline features across applications. But let’s talk about Agentic AI, a different kind of intelligence altogether.
While common AI tools assist us within a defined framework, Agentic AI goes further. This is AI that doesn’t wait for user prompts—it detects patterns, makes decisions, and initiates actions across multiple platforms, all without human intervention. Imagine a customer service AI that answers FAQs and identifies rising complaints about a product, triggers support actions, and flags the product team. Or consider a virtual sales assistant that detects when a customer might abandon their cart and proactively offers a discount.
Building for this level of intelligence demands more than adding AI-powered features to existing tools. It requires an architecture that enables these agents to work autonomously yet cooperatively, pulling data from multiple sources, crossing departmental lines, and aligning with real-world business priorities. In other words, Agentic AI isn’t just about adding intelligence; it’s about creating a foundation where AI agents can act on insights independently.
Vendors like Salesforce and SAP are building agentic capabilities into their ecosystems, but lock-in is a risk, as with any new tech. Organizations will need to decide whether to build within a single ecosystem or maintain flexibility by creating independent platforms for agentic workflows.
Related - Architecting for Agentic AI – Moving from Simple Automation to Autonomous Decision-Making
The future of AI will undoubtedly be everywhere, but the real advantage lies in designing it to be proactive and autonomous. Are we beyond spellcheck now?