Good morning. AI-powered digital labor is fundamentally changing the way work is accomplished.
“We have jobs today within our own organization that didn’t exist 60 days ago,” Andy Valenzuela, EVP and COO of employee success at Salesforce, said during the Fortune Workplace Innovation Summit last week.
The future of work is increasingly collaborative and dynamic, and will be augmented by tools like AI agents—autonomous programs that perform tasks on behalf of users, Valenzuela explained. That requires companies to rethink existing jobs, invest in talent, and maintain organizational flexibility to accommodate agents, he said.
In four years, automation for frontline workers has ramped up, said Mahe Bayireddi, CEO and cofounder of Phenom, an HR technology company, during the session. The use of automation among knowledge workers is catching up, he added. Change management may be a factor for many companies as they structure ways to deploy AI agents.
However, many AI agents are already on the job. PwC’s May survey of 300 senior executives found that 88% say their team or business function plans to increase AI-related budgets in the next 12 months due to agentic AI. Likewise, 79% say AI agents already are being adopted in their companies and, of those, two-thirds report that they’re increasing productivity.
As companies determine the best use cases to integrate AI agents into their operations, some leaders are grappling with a fundamental question: What should be automated, and what still requires a human touch?
Bayireddi offered this analogy: “Agents are like ants.” Just as ants efficiently handle repetitive, essential tasks, AI agents can take on the routine work that often drains employee energy and engagement.
You have to continually evaluate where AI agents can create efficiencies and allow human talent to focus on higher-value opportunities, Valenzuela said. He offered the example of Salesforce launching a pay planning system: “We actually built an agent that did the entire enablement for those 11,000 people,” he said. Every manager could engage with this agent to learn the new system. Instead of his team focusing on the enablement piece, they could focus on more strategic work.
The primary reason for deploying AI agents is to achieve autonomy, Bayireddi said. He explained three types to consider: operational autonomy (automating specific tasks), functional autonomy (automating processes within business units), and hierarchical autonomy (how agents fit within organizational power structures). Deploying agents among knowledge workers requires careful attention to hierarchy and decision-making authority, as organizational structure greatly influences where and how agents should operate, Bayireddi said.
At Salesforce, they’re building scorecards to balance workloads between agents and humans, Valenzuela said. Managers must learn how to manage both agents and humans, he said.
However, deploying teams of agents in very complex, revenue-driving, regulated industries can be concerning for some. It’s about balancing innovation with compliance, ensuring agents are integrated thoughtfully into existing structures, and maintaining trust through transparency and strong governance, Bayireddi said.
Sheryl Estrada
sheryl.estrada@fortune.com
Leaderboard
Andrew F. Walters was promoted from CFO to CEO of H2O America (Nasdaq: HTO), a network of local water and wastewater utilities, effective July 1. Walters succeeds Eric W. Thornburg who will retire on June 30. For more than 11 years, Walters has served in key leadership roles within H2O America. Before joining the company, Walters was a managing director within J.P. Morgan Asset Management’s Infrastructure Investments Group.
James Rinn was appointed CFO of PSQ Holdings, Inc. (NYSE: PSQH), a payments provider, effective June 1. Rinn will succeed Brad Searle, who will transition to SVP of finance for the company’s brands division. Rinn has served as a member of the PublicSquare board of directors and as audit committee chair since the company’s IPO in July 2023. He currently serves as the CFO of Sedera, Inc. Rinn brings over 30 years of accounting leadership at public and private companies, having held multiple CFO roles.
Big Deal
“Artificial Intelligence: Use and Oversight in Financial Services” is a report released last week by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO). AI use by financial services providers, such as banks and credit unions, has increased in recent years, driven by more advanced algorithms, increased data availability, and other factors. These organizations are using AI for various purposes, including improving customer service.
The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act includes a provision requiring the GAO to annually report on financial services regulations. This report reviews the benefits and risks of AI use in financial services, federal financial regulators’ oversight of AI in the sector, and the regulators’ own use of AI in their supervisory and market oversight activities.
Going deeper
“Influencer who attended Trump’s memecoin dinner says he got a ‘Walmart steak’—and no access to the president” is a Fortune report by Ben Weiss.
From the report: “Nicholas Pinto, a 25-year-old social media influencer, accumulated more than $360,000 in President Donald Trump’s cryptocurrency to attend an ‘unforgettable Gala DINNER’ with the commander-in-chief. The food, though, was forgettable.
“But the real draw of the evening, of course, wasn’t steak or halibut. It was Trump himself. The top 220 holders of his memecoin were promised an exclusive evening with the 47th president. In total, investors bought up $148 million of the cryptocurrency to attend the dinner, according to crypto analytics firm Inca Digital.” You can read the complete Fortune report here.
Overheard
“We continue to believe one of the biggest U.S. trade and tariff deals on the table that the Street and tech investors are laser focused on is India. Given India’s technology workforce, high engineering talent, and supply chain infrastructure it’s becoming crystal clear there is one big threat to China’s elite tech supply chain global status—and it’s India.”
—Wedbush Securities analysts wrote in a note on Monday.
