The next era of work will introduce widespread collaboration between human employees and agentic AI chatbots — systems that can both answer questions and complete tasks.

Why It Hits: The AI revolution is here. While the tech industry is pitching AI agents as an added value to a human workforce, chatbots are already replacing humans in some roles. The remaining flesh-and-blood workers at companies will likely be expected to play middle manager to a team of chatbots that can increase their productivity.

Between the Cubicles: Ryan Gavin, the chief marketing officer at Slack, told Axios to get ready for chatbots to slide into their work DMs.

  • Salesforce (the parent company of Slack) launched AI agents that can act as sales reps or personal shoppers for clients.

  • AI startup Sierra recently raised $175 million to roll out customized enterprise chatbots.

  • OpenAI has projected that its revenue will triple this year, partly powered by selling its agentic chatbots to SoftBank.

The Future: Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff called AI agents a “limitless workforce” because… well… they don’t get tired, go on vacation, or quit when they’re looking for new opportunities. But first, they need a major update to become a reliable workforce. AI-agent management startup Wayfound has itself been using AI agents as employees for the past year. The verdict: “It feels a lot like managing a team of interns, who are book smart but still make frustrating mistakes on the job once in a while,” says CEO Tatyana Mamut.

Humans, you’re in the clear… for now.

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