I’ve been round lengthy sufficient to see each main shift in office expertise spark the identical response: panic.
I noticed it after we moved work to the cloud. Once we began utilizing AI in search and data discovery. Once we changed spreadsheets with shared docs. And now, with the rise of AI brokers, I’m seeing it once more.
The query at all times comes quick: Will this expertise take my job?
Right here’s my reply for at this time’s model of this existential query: AI brokers gained’t substitute you. However somebody utilizing them would possibly.
That’s not a risk—it’s a wake-up name. As a result of this technology of AI isn’t about automation. It’s about amplification and influence.
Meet the brand new MVP of labor: The AI glue man
To clarify what I imply, let me borrow an analogy from sports activities. I’ve lengthy admired athletes like former NBA swingman Andre Iguodala—those that don’t lead the league in stats however are completely important to their groups. They rebound. They defend. They convey. They make the gamers round them higher. That’s why Iggy was named the NBA Finals MVP in 2015—he did the gritty, neglected work that held the Warriors collectively.
In basketball, they name that sort of participant the “glue guy.”
That’s what AI brokers are at work. They’re the glue guys of the trendy crew—not the celebrities, however the silent difference-makers. They fill within the gaps. They preserve all the things linked. They assist folks accomplish their work sooner, extra precisely, and higher.
Take one of many firms my crew at GrowthLoop lately partnered with—Allegro, extensively thought-about the “Amazon of Jap Europe.” It’s utilizing a device of ours that’s powered by agentic AI and sits on prime of its information cloud. As an alternative of leaping between disconnected instruments, its entrepreneurs now work alongside a crew of specialised AI brokers: one understands information, one other builds optimized journeys, others floor insights, counsel audiences, and brainstorm marketing campaign concepts.
All of it occurs from a single interface, like a command middle for contemporary advertising and marketing. The brokers don’t substitute the people—they empower them. The end result? A 2X carry in return on advert spend. A 60% leap in gross merchandise worth. A virtually 70% drop in price per click on.
That’s not job substitute. That’s job transformation.
And the most effective half? It’s simply getting began.
We’ve seen this dynamic play out earlier than. At my earlier firm, we launched Glean—a device I helped launch that remodeled how groups uncover data inside their firms—and it was the identical story. Individuals feared overload. However what they discovered was a sooner path to the proper data, and extra time for actual problem-solving. That’s the story of each main breakthrough in tech: first, worry. Then, productiveness. Then, progress.
What makes AI brokers really feel totally different is how briskly they’re evolving. These fashions don’t simply automate left-brain duties like math and scheduling anymore. They now deal with right-brain duties—creativity, language, technique. However the true breakthrough is their potential to purpose in actual time and personalize outcomes. These brokers aren’t simply instruments—they’re strategic companions. They course of information sooner than any human, spot patterns we’d miss, and counsel choices we would by no means contemplate.
We’ve already seen this shift throughout industries. Builders are utilizing AI to generate code and spot bugs sooner. Buyer help groups are delivering personalised solutions in seconds as a result of brokers are stitching collectively previous interactions within the background. Inventive groups are testing and iterating on campaigns with out ready weeks for outcomes.
None of this makes AI scary or removes the necessity for people. It eliminates the drudgery.
Look inside any giant firm and also you’ll discover a mountain of labor that’s pure busywork. Layers of reporting, standing updates, and guide coordination devour huge quantities of time—what Asana’s Anatomy of Work Index calls “work about work,” which eats as much as 60% of an individual’s day. All of these hours add as much as big quantities of misplaced time. It’s modern-day “TPS reports” (from Workplace House) on repeat. However AI brokers change that. Think about if, for each undertaking, a crisp three-bullet abstract was auto-generated and shared weekly—no chasing, no compiling. Now your product supervisor can spend time with prospects, not decks. Your advertising and marketing lead can concentrate on artistic, not cobbling information from 5 instruments. These brokers aren’t stealing jobs; they’re releasing folks to do the work that truly issues.
Are some jobs going to vary? Completely. However present me an period once they didn’t. The highest jobs at this time didn’t even exist 20 years in the past. Immediate engineer. Information strategist. AI agent supervisor. There’s a complete new class of labor rising round how we information, govern, and collaborate with these methods.
It’s straightforward to really feel overwhelmed, particularly with how briskly issues are shifting. However velocity doesn’t need to imply chaos. In reality, AI brokers may help tame the chaos, particularly for firms buried underneath many years of siloed information, legacy instruments, and fragmented workflows. They’re the connective tissue, the lacking hyperlink. The glue.
And right here’s the factor about glue guys: They don’t ask for the highlight. They only make the crew higher.
The way forward for work is a crew sport
If you happen to’re a frontrunner studying this, I encourage you to start out getting aware of new expertise the place people and brokers collaborate, a lot the identical method as human groups do at this time. Ask your self what are the low-value, repetitive duties that nobody likes doing.
The workforce is extra adaptable than we give it credit score for. Historical past reveals that when persons are given new instruments, they discover new methods to work. The identical will occur right here. We’ll invent jobs we haven’t considered but. We’ll clear up issues we as soon as thought-about unsolvable. We’ll construct groups the place everybody, human or agent, performs to their strengths.
If I had 10 seconds in entrance of each worker at a Fortune 500 firm, right here’s what I’d say: You’re not going to lose your job to AI brokers. You’re going to lose it to somebody who is aware of the way to collaborate with them very well. So embrace it. Be taught it. Use it to make your work higher—and extra human. There’s no bounds to human ingenuity. Brokers will assist scale back the gap from thought to influence.
As a result of on this new period of labor, probably the most highly effective transfer you can also make is to play like a crew. And your crew will solely profit from having glue guys.
The opinions expressed in Fortune.com commentary items are solely the views of their authors and don’t essentially replicate the opinions and beliefs of Fortune.
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This story was initially featured on Fortune.com
