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AI BriefWire / Briefing
A recent study shows that 96% of IT professionals currently use AI in their work. The top seven applications involve agentic AI tools that perform tasks autonomously. However, validating AI outputs remains a significant challenge for implementation.
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A new study points to an emerging skill set that is becoming more valuable in the AI age: validating AI outputs.
If you're curious about what's happening in the eye of the artificial intelligence storm, look no further than what the data analysts of the world are up to. They're bullish on AI, of course, but they're still using spreadsheets, and barely a handful are working with real-time data.
That's the word from a new global survey of 700 data analysts and 700 IT leaders from Alteryx. While 96% report using AI for their work, only half can be considered frequent users of AI tools -- 49% report they use AI always or most of the time.
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Agentic AI is high on the agenda, with close to six in 10 respondents, or 59%, predicting they will be actively employing AI agents within the next 12 months. In addition, at least half say they are willing to grant AI agents "unrestricted access" to their data.
The security implications of such access were not discussed in the survey report, but 44% did specify that it was critical to include human oversight as part of such access.
The most common agentic AI applications now in production are drafting communications and scheduling workflows.