The way we interact with software in our work and personal lives is about to get a lot more interesting.
For years, most people have become accustomed to managing untold tasks through apps built on opaque databases. Whether revising a contact in a business platform or lining up something to stream in the evening, you never really have to peek behind the curtain to see how these tools function — you just focus on the job in front of you.
Agentic software intends to flip the script on this entire relationship.
Instead of using a different app for every step of a process, imagine being able to tell a digital assistant precisely what you want done, leave instructions, and then get on with your day while the software handles everything without further input. Planning a vacation? In the world as we know it, that requires jumping between travel sites, scanning for price drops when you can catch them, then scrambling to make hotel bookings and restaurant reservations at hours that fit around your schedule.
With the rise of AI-driven agents, all of that could fall neatly into place with hardly any oversight from you. Tell your agent exactly what you need — whether it’s watching for a price under three hundred dollars on a flight or nabbing a reservation at an Italian eatery for your Saturday night out — and it springs into action, even if the prices drop in the wee hours of the morning while you are sleeping soundly.
The Coming Wave of AI Agents
This isn’t science fiction anymore. Tools like ChatGPT already spin up travel itineraries in seconds, tailored to your tastes and timelines. But the next chapter for agentic software is far bigger than chatbots.
AI agents are starting to cross from simple helpers into robust colleagues, handling multistep tasks that cut across an array of platforms. For oil and gas companies, that might mean reading and organizing pipeline data each morning — once a grind for employees and now the kind of mindless routine that AI can do perfectly. “AI agents can now follow a precise set of instructions to automate these tedious tasks and give employees back time to do more interesting strategic work,” says Jay Bhatty, an industry leader embracing this technology.
It’s not hard to picture a future where each person has multiple agents at their side. One might tackle household chores, another handles errands, while still another manages your work schedule or vacation planning — all working quietly in the background.
Naturally, some skepticism is brewing alongside the excitement. The change is coming fast, and there are real concerns about privacy and the shifting nature of work. But advocates insist the upside is immense. Why spend hours navigating through sites chasing better deals or compiling spreadsheets, when your new assistants can do so in record time? That gives people space to solve bigger, thornier challenges that AI, at least for now, can’t touch. As Jay Bhatty puts it, “AI agents aren’t here to take human jobs; they’re here to give us time to tackle the higher order problems that agents aren’t able to solve.”
Life with agents is taking shape — and it might just free us to spend less time on the mundane and more time dream chasing, as demonstrated by recent developments in coding agent for GitHub Copilot and in-depth reports on premium pricing announced plans.
