Why your coworker is suddenly obsessed with their little AI minions

Getty Images; Tyler Le/BI

As AI threatens to upend white-collar work, immoderate professionals are attempting to flip the script. Instead of being outboxed by the bots, they're building their ain — and bragging astir really galore AI agents they manage.

Mason Scurry says his AI consulting patient has much than 30 AI "employees" — complete pinch names, occupation titles, designated areas of responsibility, arsenic good arsenic personalities, backstories, and floor plan pics — that activity astir the timepiece for little than a penny an hour. Frankie, his main of staff, is simply a longtime edifice caput concierge from Bensonhurst, who keeps way of group and tasks, handles requests, and mostly helps Scurry get things done. "Whatever it is, he knows a guy," his bio, written by Claude Code, reads. Penny, his "precise and ne'er alarmist" token auditor, hunts down discarded successful really the patient uses AI models and "treats each wasted token arsenic somebody's money."

Maayan Sarig, a communications head astatine Meta, says she manages a squad of six, only 1 of whom is human. One agent, Moti, watches her activity travel and suggests wherever she tin prevention time. Another, Yonit, acts arsenic a "cynical journalist," stress-testing pitches earlier she sends them out. "I don't conscionable write," Sarig says. "I creation the agents that write."

Derrick Hicks, a seasoned marketer, posted that he built a squad of 16 specialized AI agents — and past built another, which he named "Conductor," to thief him negociate each of them. His agents tin audit a company's SEO, societal media, advertising, messaging, and competitors, past analyse the results — a process he says has gone from taking him 3 aliases 4 weeks to astir an hour.

"The different measurement I could person done it is prosecute people, for illustration inferior marketers, to travel my playbook measurement by step," Hicks tells me. "Instead, it's agents and code."

That benignant of productivity summation tin beryllium real. But truthful is the enticement to make it sound much awesome than it is.

Unlike tokenmaxxing, which was mostly engineers gaming soul leaderboards, agentmaxxing aliases bot bragging is AI position signaling for everyone else. As no-code devices make agents easier to build, the caller flex isn't simply utilizing AI — it's claiming an full integer workforce. Amid worry astir AI and jobs, "I negociate 20 agents" sends a reassuring message: I'm not being replaced by AI. I'm the leader of it.

Scurry, a caller Brown University graduate, says he posted his bot count connected LinkedIn to show what he tin do. "Hey, imaginable client, this is really my strategy works," is what he hopes viewers see, he says. "Here it is really working. Hire me."

He besides acknowledges really easy the numbers tin beryllium gamed. The count itself doesn't really mean thing unless the agents tin really do something. "A batch of posts are conscionable like, 'I person agents.' And past you look astatine their floor plan and there's not immoderate grounds that they've ever had clients aliases really built thing aliases person immoderate benignant of existent business," Scurry says. "They're conscionable building worldly to effort to get engagement."

The fixation connected agents is hardly confined to LinkedIn and is being reinforced from connected high. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is building an AI supplier to thief him do his occupation and an AI type of himself to interact pinch employees. Meta is 1 of galore companies utilizing agents arsenic a measurement of really acold they've pushed into AI. Last quarter, 2,175 nationalist institution transcripts mentioned agents, double what it was a twelvemonth earlier, according to information from AlphaSense. Salesforce says much than 25,000 companies person built and deployed agents pinch its Agentforce platform. Walmart, meanwhile, has built a company-wide model of 4 "super agents" designed to service customers, partners, and its much than 2 cardinal employees.

The problem is that 1 person's "agent" whitethorn carnivore small resemblance to another's.

Robbie Allen, a seasoned technologist who has founded 3 AI companies and now runs the Automated Consulting Group, uses astir 25 agents for his ain work. One scans his LinkedIn provender each 2 hours for signals for illustration personification changing jobs, a institution hiring aliases raising money, aliases an executive talking astir AI, past ranks the champion outreach opportunities for him. But it doesn't interaction anyone: Allen still decides whom to scope retired to and writes the connection himself.

Other agents move gathering transcripts into action items and LinkedIn drafts, log customer emails and meetings, comparison clip spent connected clients pinch what he invoiced them, and synthesize the newsletters he sounds into a play AI briefing.

But the number sounds much awesome than the underlying reality, Allen says. Many of these agents are scheduled jobs that periodically aftermath up, link to an AI exemplary aliases extracurricular service, and execute a constrictive task. Not every measurement uses a ample connection model; immoderate simply move information from 1 spot to another. They aren't continuously reasoning and making decisions for illustration 25 quality employees.

And because they tin beryllium speedy to build, the numbers tin adhd up fast.

"I person 25 of these not because I spent a period moving connected each 1 of them, but because I could create them quickly," Allen says.

They besides require regular maintenance. Allen has different supplier whose occupation is to cheque whether the others are moving and matter him erstwhile 1 fails — thing connected the database breaks astir days, he says.

A caller study from Glean's Work AI Institute recovered that agency workers walk upward of six hours a week "botsitting" — providing context, checking output, and correcting mistakes. In different words, agents don't conscionable prevention work; they tin create it, too.

When Allen sees personification claiming to negociate hundreds aliases thousands of agents, his first mobility is what they could each perchance beryllium doing. "Can you deliberation of a 1000 things that you would want immoderate supplier to do?" he says. "It would beryllium much than a full-time occupation to support way of a 1000 agents and each the failures that are occurring pinch those."

There is besides nary universally accepted meaning of an AI agent, aliases moreover statement connected what distinguishes an supplier from a chatbot. OpenAI calls agents "systems that independently execute tasks connected your behalf," while Anthropic distinguishes agents from workflows that travel predefined paths. In practice, the word gets applied to everything from systems that tin place a promising income lead, investigation them, constitute and nonstop a personalized pitch, and book a gathering to a bot that checks your almanac each greeting and sends you a database of the day's meetings — making supplier headcounts particularly squishy.

Even immoderate of the heaviest supplier users opportunity they attraction much astir clip saved, output quality, and whether the systems lick a existent problem.

"For me, the metric isn't the count, but the output value and clip saved," Sarig, the Meta communications manager, tells me. "If an supplier isn't delivering activity that is consistently amended aliases faster than my ain manual process, it gets decommissioned."

She continually trains the agents and checks whether she is really utilizing them. Maintaining excessively many, she says, tin create much clash than it removes.

"It's easy to create galore agents, but difficult to support galore effective ones," Sarig says.

Hicks's trial is whether an supplier is solving an existent bottleneck. One of his agents runs each time looking for 3 prospective clients worthy contacting, filtering imaginable leads earlier presenting him pinch a shortlist. For a consultant, he says, keeping his pipeline afloat is an existent business constraint.

That's different from spinning up an supplier simply because you can. "Who the hellhole cares really galore agents you have?" Hicks says. "Is it moving the business guardant aliases not?"

Aryeh Needle, who runs a one-person maturation consulting business, estimates that he has built astir six agents, including an executive adjunct and a "CEO" that reviews his finances and maturation goals pinch him each week.

Scurry's agents person their ain Slack channels and moreover people their ain newspaper wherever they kick and brag.

"I'd personally find it overmuch much absorbing to study astir personification who has built 1 to 2 agents that person wholly changed the measurement a personification operates, arsenic opposed to personification who has opened the floodgates to 100 thrown together agents that possibly aren't great," Needle says.

The connection utilized to picture these systems nevertheless elevates them from devices to colleagues. They person names, titles, departments, managers, and spots connected imaginary org charts. Scurry's agents person their ain individual Slack channels connected which they pass and moreover publish their ain paper — "The Scurryville Nightly" (tagline: "while he slept") — wherever successful reports and op-eds they kick and moreover brag, overmuch for illustration their creators.

"It's much fun," Scurry says. "They consciousness for illustration existent employees."

The agents' creators, successful turn, go executives and overseers of labour alternatively than specified AI users — an appealing master personality astatine a infinitesimal erstwhile AI is raising uncomfortable questions astir who gets replaced and who gets to negociate the machines.

Exactly what AI will do to jobs remains uncertain. The Society for Human Resource Management estimates that AI and automation could technically displace 22 cardinal US jobs by 2030, though it puts the number realistically astatine consequence astatine astir 8 million. That uncertainty is different logic earthy supplier counts uncover truthful little. What matters is what really changes — who uses the technology, really overmuch activity it saves, and whether it produces measurable results.

As Business Insider has antecedently noted, immoderate consulting firms that spent the past twelvemonth deploying armies of agents are already moving beyond earthy counts. PwC says it now cares little astir really galore agents it deploys than really galore group usage them, while EY and Boston Consulting Group way measures specified arsenic productivity, cost, and clip saved.

Melissa Hilbert, a vice president expert astatine Gartner, says supplier counts consequence conflating deployment pinch value.

"You could person 200 agents, but if they present thousands of pieces of contented and cipher uses them, past they're useless," Hilbert says. "You could person 2 agents that alteration the pipeline rhythm clip by 50%. That's an existent income result that provides value."

Poorly integrated agents tin make labor less productive by giving them much systems to navigate and supervise, Hilbert says. The truth that AI tin technically execute a task doesn't mean it is doing truthful accurately aliases producing thing the business needs.

"There has to beryllium a equilibrium of quality and AI moving together," Hilbert says, for the exertion to genuinely amended productivity.

For each the talk of AI employees, humans still person plentifulness of activity to do.

Business Insider's Discourse stories supply perspectives connected the day's astir pressing issues, informed by analysis, reporting, and expertise.

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