Digital employees set to redefine workforce organization

Chinese tech companies are banking on digital employees powered by artificial intelligence agents to enhance productivity, liberate people from repetitive work and bolster digital transformation in an era of rapid development of AI technology.

As AI is increasingly leveraged to identify people's needs and solve problems, digital workforces are becoming the core carriers for reconstructing the organizational forms of enterprises, and driving revolutionary changes in productivity, industry experts said.

An AI agent refers to a system or program that is capable of autonomously performing tasks on behalf of a user or another system by designing its workflow and utilizing available tools.

AI agents are more advanced than chatbots because they not only provide suggestions or answers, but autonomously execute complex actions across a multitude of industries, thus delivering tangible results.

The capabilities of large language models are evolving and advancing at unprecedented speed, said Ruan Yu, vice-president of Baidu, emphasizing that the accelerated evolution of models is driving AI to shift from a human-machine collaboration model to an AI agent form.

An increasing number of new types of workers will emerge in people's daily work, and AI agents will participate in all aspects of enterprise operations in the form of "digital employees", Ruan said.

The company has launched the first batch of AI-powered digital employees, covering core business functions such as marketing managers, car salespersons, promotion specialists, product managers, course advisers and recruitment specialists.

It will create more digital employees for various positions, while expanding the application scenarios of such employees across various fields, including education, automobiles, finance and fast-moving consumer goods.

According to a report released by Beijing-based market research firm EO Intelligence, the market scale of AI agent marketing and sales in China stood at 44.2 billion yuan ($6.2 billion) in 2024, and this is expected to reach more than 1 trillion yuan in the next five years.

AI agents have immense growth potential in the field of application and development, said Zhu Guangxiang, head of Baidu's Miaoda product.

Although they will replace some repetitive and mechanical job positions, new employment demand will be created and people can shift their focus to more creative work, Zhu said.

He added that AI agents have different areas of expertise and complete various tasks by combining different sectors and professional fields. As the new carriers of content, information and services, AI agents are approaching a tipping point of explosive growth.

Global consultancy Gartner said AI agents will augment or automate 50 percent of business decisions by 2027. This integration will enhance decision flows by handling complex analysis and data retrieval.

It added that AI agents can plan and automate tasks, make informed decisions and interact with their surroundings. Tech service leaders can help clients revolutionize their operations by integrating AI agents into offerings that are configured with components designed for their primary purpose.

"We're entering a new era where AI agents will take on real work at scale," said Wang Guanchun, chairman and CEO of Chinese intelligent automation platform Laiye.

There exist huge opportunities to bolster the application of AI agents in a wide range of sectors like manufacturing, Wang said.

Wang said that all Fortune 500 companies will have more digital workers than human employees and 90 percent of knowledge work will be executed autonomously by AI agents, while emphasizing that human society will enter an era of the AI agent economy.

Laiye has built solutions via chatbots, robotic process automation and document automation. Its value proposition is to empower every employee with AI agents, boost productivity and creativity, and build a future-ready workforce for businesses.

Wang said the company has been engaged in the "digital employees" landscape for several years, and with the stronger inference and planning capabilities of large language models, AI agents have become the carriers of new digital workers.

It is ramping up efforts to accelerate the digital transformation from robotic automation to intelligent automation with AI agents.

As customers increasingly leverage AI-powered agents to initiate, manage and negotiate service requests on their behalf, service teams must adapt to this transformative shift, embracing new roles and skills to effectively collaborate with these intelligent systems, said Daniel O'Sullivan, senior director analyst of the Gartner Customer Service & Support Practice.