Oracle on agentic AI: Jobs fears, "productivity multipliers" and the mindset for success
"Managing, monitoring, and interacting with AI agents will become the new normal in fast-moving early-adopter organisations."
Agentic AI is the next giant leap for artificial intelligence and one of the most hyped concepts in the world in 2025.
OpenAI boss Sam Altman is one of the most prominent voices predicting the arrival of autonomous agents this year - but OpenAI is far from the only player in the arena.
Nvidia recently released Blueprints which enable customers to build AI agents it describes as "knowledge robots" that can plan, reason, act relatively independently and chew through vast datasets to extract insights.
ServiceNow is reportedly planning to release an agentic platform in early 2025. Amazon is making Alexa into an agent and companies from Salesforce to Google and Microsoft are experimenting with agents.
Although its already a crowded race, Oracle has been on the front-foot when it comes to developing and rolling out agentic solutions. In September 2024, it added more than 50 role-based AI agents within the Oracle Fusion Cloud Applications Suite to "execute frequent, repetitive tasks and allow employees and managers to focus their time on more strategic tasks and initiatives."
Machine spoke to Miranda Nash, group VP, applications development & strategy, Oracle, to catch up on the state of play in agentic at the beginning of 2025.
Machine: Where are we in the development of agentic AI?
Oracle: As of 2025, the development of AI agents has reached a pivotal stage, especially in the workplace. AI is changing the way we work, transforming traditional business processes, and has the potential to disrupt entire industries.
Being used to recommend actions, bring together insights, and significantly reduce the time spent on routine task, AI technology is leading a new era of innovation and is quickly becoming an essential workplace tool.
Machine: How will AI agents change the working world?
Oracle: "As we see the technology evolve and integrate into organisations, the most productive employees will be working alongside AI agents. These agents will be productivity multipliers, autonomously executing complex workflows using a range of enterprise software tools on behalf of employees.
"Managing, monitoring, and interacting with AI agents will become the new normal in fast-moving early-adopter organisations. While traditional user experience won’t disappear, employees will spend less time inputting text into text fields and clicking through screens, and will instead use natural language to request insights, authoring suggestions, and recommended actions from agents."
AI mass unemployment fears will "dissipate"
Machine: What agentic AI developments do you expect to see over the next 12 months?
Oracle: "In 2025, AI agents will prove their value as a partner. Fears around AI replacing employees will dissipate as predictive, generative, and agentic AI features and capabilities become essential tools that make everyone more productive in the workplace. As AI agents become a central part of many organisations, employees will realise that working with AI helps elevate their work and enable more strategic and meaningful roles.
"This will also be the year that AI becomes part of many enterprises’ DNA with organisations applying it across all areas of their business from supply chain and customer experience to finance and HR. An inevitable increase in adoption will draw a clear line in the sand between those that are capitalising on the benefits of AI and those that are not.
"Organisations that invest in AI adoption will be on track to unlock productivity amplifiers and accelerate business performance, and organisations that don’t will get left behind."
The power of patience: A mindset for success
Machine: What mindset should leaders adopt to ensure success during the rise of agentic AI models?
Oracle: "Many organisations expect AI to result in immediate and significant ROI, which may push them to back out of their investments too early. Business leaders that practice patience will recognise the long-term value inherent in innovating, iterating, and adopting AI.
"As the AI agent hype continues to grow, many vendors will strive for the largest offering of agents. But organisations should focus on agent quality over quantity. While it may seem nice to have hundreds of thousands of options to choose from, the selection process will quickly become daunting and will introduce challenges with testing, monitoring, measuring results accuracy, security, and cost.
"As AI agents infiltrate the enterprise world, curation and safety will be more valuable to organisations than sheer volume."
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