AI Agency
61 Pages Posted: Last revised: 11 Feb 2025
Date Written: January 31, 2025
Abstract
AI agents, or autonomous digital employees, represent a new form of agency within firms. This paper provides an initial exploration of their reliability and cost-effectiveness across different AI workforce designs and degrees of oversight. The findings highlight the potential of AI agents to reduce operational costs, while demonstrating that their added value requires more than intelligence alone—strategic AI workforce design and oversight are also critical. By tracing the actions of AI agents, including their tool usage, reasoning patterns, interactions with firm algorithms, and conversations with each other, the paper identifies key factors shaping their efficiency and limitations.
Keywords: AI Agents, AI Workforce, Agency Problem, Organizational Design
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