A new IEEE study has found that 96 percent of technology leaders expect agentic artificial intelligence (AI) to accelerate in 2026.
The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) surveyed 400 global leaders on how agentic AI will evolve, the biggest use cases, and where challenges could arise.
Almost all agree that agentic AI innovation, exploration, and adoption will continue at a rapid speed next year as both established enterprises and startups deepen investments and commitments to the technology.
The PEX Report 2025/26 found that 40 percent of surveyed organizations currently use AI agents/agentic AI to support business transformation, with more than half (59 percent) planning to invest in agentic AI/AI agents in the next 12 months.
Agentic AI adoption to accelerate in 2026
More than half (52 percent) of those polled expect agentic AI personal assistants to reach mass or near-mass consumption in 2026. However, 50 percent see over reliance on AI and potential inaccuracies as one of the leading concerns of its use in organizations.
What’s more, 44 percent seek AI ethics practices as one of the main skills in candidates hired for AI related roles in 2026, according to the IEEE.
“The adoption of agentic AI is in rapid ascendence with businesses and consumers alike. Yet the process will not be without friction,” commented Eleanor Watson, senior IEEE member and an AI ethics engineer at Singularity University. “Many services are not yet ‘agent-addressable,’ and trust will remain fragile until norms of transparency and accountability settle. Semi-autonomous systems can also drift from intended objectives, requiring oversight and regular audits.”
There is little time to respond to these challenges with AI advancing at a tremendous, and accelerating, rate, Watson added. “A lot of AI safety efforts will require rapid responses to emerging situations and problems, as well as the rapid investigation of incidents so that they can be mitigated in future.”
The trajectory is clear – agentic AI presents both unprecedented opportunity and risk. “Thoughtful governance is required in order to balance harnessing its potential while mitigating the associated dangers,” Watson said. “We must not only ensure that these powerful AI systems are used in an ethical manner, but also work to ensure that these systems remain loyal and safe partners for users.”
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8 ways agentic AI transforms process excellence
Agentic AI is reshaping process excellence in ways that go well beyond traditional task automation. Agentic AI will continue to make operations self-optimizing, predictive, and radically more autonomous. This will shift process excellence from a manual discipline into an AI-driven strategic engine.
- Continuous, autonomous process optimization
- AI-facilitated process discovery and mapping
- End-to-end workflow orchestration
- Human-in-the-loop becomes human-as-the-director
- Sharp rise in operational autonomy
- Predictive “next-best-action” guidance across departments
- AI-native process governance and compliance
- Proliferation of specialized AI agents