Autonomous AI agents are moving from research demos into production workflows faster than most leaders expected. Teams that adopt early are seeing meaningful gains in support deflection, sales prospecting, and internal knowledge work.
What changed in the last 12 months
Three shifts converged: cheaper long-context inference, reliable tool use, and standardized agent protocols. Together they make multi-step automation viable for non-trivial business processes.
Where to start
Begin with a single, well-scoped workflow that has clear success metrics. Resist the urge to build a general assistant on day one.
