Artificial intelligence is driving cutting-edge automation use cases that are increasingly important to enterprise operations. In response, the industry is building out expertise and infrastructure in an effort to expand the frontiers of innovation to support AI and automation.

theCUBE Research’s Dave Vellante and co-host Rebecca Knight talk about automation and agentic AI.

UiPath Inc. is one such stakeholder. Having evolved from early robotic process automation to comprehensive enterprise automation, the company is charging ahead to integrate AI agents into business processes.

“They were doing AI for a long, long time,” said Dave Vellante (pictured, left) chief analyst at theCUBE Research. “They started with computer vision [and] they had machine learning, etc. But then gen AI has changed everything. I think people are finding out that it’s harder than they thought to implement AI in a way that enterprises expect. Act 2 is all about going beyond bots into agents. [Robotics process automation] is like the plumbing. Without it, water will be spraying everywhere.”

Vellante and co-host Rebecca Knight (right) hosted an analyst segment at UiPath Forward 2024 during an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio. They discussed UiPath’s efforts to tackle the complexity of harmonizing data, managing agents and ensuring governance for true AI and automation at scale.       (* Disclosure below.)

From bots to agents: A new era of AI and automation

Much is being made about the shift from traditional bots to AI-driven agents, according to Vellante. Businesses need both bots and agents to work in harmony. Bots handle structured, rules-based tasks, providing stability and governance. AI agents bring in the ability to learn, adapt and manage more complex, less predictable tasks. This combination of bots and agents working together represents the future of automation.

“The application stack is about to completely change, and UiPath hopes to play a major role in that agent orchestration layer,” Vellante said. “Things like causal AI, how to harmonize the data, the whole agent orchestration framework [and] backend connections … all of that is increasingly important. And UiPath today has its fingers in a lot of those pies.”

While a bot can efficiently manage sensitive tasks such as handling passport or credit card information, AI agents are beginning to take on more nuanced responsibilities, albeit under the governance of bots. Dines emphasized that we are still in the early stages of this evolution, and AI agents must be carefully managed to ensure security, trust and accuracy in their operations.

“This is the first time ever that we’re replacing humans in cognitive functions,” Vellante said. “And so there was a little bit of fuzziness there. One thing that struck me is they made the point that it wasn’t too long ago that robots couldn’t climb stairs, and they certainly can climb stairs today.”

AI, which brings creativity and innovation, must be harnessed through automation systems that handle repetitive and mundane tasks, allowing organizations to scale operations effectively. AI-powered automation is about both efficiency and freeing employees from administrative burdens, giving them more time to focus on higher-value work, Knight noted.

“It’s not AI that’s going to take our jobs,” she said. “It’s the people who know how to work with AI. And I think that, yes, that is in general true because humans are going to be around, and we’re going to need something to do. So I do think that there will be some short-term pain … and there will be some job dislocation.”

Here’s the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE Research’s coverage of UiPath Forward 2024: 

(* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for UiPath Forward. Sponsors of theCUBE’s event coverage do not have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE