AI Agents as the New UI for Smart Software

Users, both enterprise and consumers, seek simplicity when interacting with complex systems. People don’t want to go through 10 steps during an hour when an action could be resolved in just two interactions in a minute. Generative AI is beginning to allow the creation of agentic workflows that can simplify and make our interactions with software more efficient.

Technology advancements bring in new capabilities that make work easier. The internet allowed the distribution of software seamless. Mobile gave users access to functionality anywhere. Generative AI is opening up the capability for humans and computers to work with natural language (and multi-modal access with images, videos, audio, etc), evolving from only touch interfaces or point and click paradigms.

This creates an opportunity for a new user interface (UI) layer that has the potential to radically simplify the way we work. Combined with automation, use cases can go from eliminating repetitive tasks, to solving sequential features with fewer human-prone errors, to shaving off dozens of hours to a knowledge worker’s month.

McKinsey has argued Generative AI will add trillions to world GDP in the next decade, and pundits are fantasizing what humans will do with the extra available time coming from the proliferation of AI systems in the future.

What’s clear is that the expertise to create AI products was not around before and software engineers and data scientists will need to gain these in-demand skills, for as long as humans continue to write code.

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