Source: Fortune
Summary
Companies are not training employees to manage AI agents effectively, leading to a capability gap in enterprise AI. As AI systems become more autonomous, employees need to learn to direct and oversee them, rather than just using them as tools. Gianpaolo Barozzi, Cisco’s 3P CTO, notes that agentic AI changes the relationship between people and technology, requiring new ways of setting boundaries and maintaining human accountability.
Our Reading
The numbers tell one story. Companies are teaching employees how to use AI, but not how to lead it. Employees are treating AI agents as tools, interns, service providers, teammates, or experts, each with different expectations and risks. The human role changes with the agent’s autonomy, requiring new ways of managing trust, accountability, and supervision.
As agents become more autonomous, employees need to recognize which relationship the work requires and manage the agent accordingly. This requires human-agent fluency, the ability to recognize the agent’s role and manage it effectively. Tom Lamberty, Senior Consultant in Cisco’s 3P Tech Office, notes that “how we define an agent’s role shapes how we work with it: how much authority we give it, how closely we question it, and where we retain judgment.”
The announcement sounds familiar. Companies are not preparing employees for the next phase of enterprise AI, where agents will increasingly function like teammates. The strategy enters a familiar phase, where companies need to build human-agent fluency to manage the risks and benefits of autonomous AI agents.
The company is not training for that. Employees are not learning to lead AI agents, leading to a capability gap in enterprise AI. The risk is not that agents will be obviously bad, but that they will be useful, fast, fluent, and confident enough that people begin to relax their judgment at exactly the moment they need to sharpen it.
The company is not preparing employees for the next phase of enterprise AI, where agents will increasingly function like teammates. The strategy enters a familiar phase, where companies need to build human-agent fluency to manage the risks and benefits of autonomous AI agents.
Author: Evan Null
