Agentic AI adoption is moving faster than many organisations are prepared for, and while the technology promises major productivity gains, the risks need to be carefully weighed.
Cliff de Wit, Chief Innovation Officer at Accelera Digital Group (ADG), says businesses need to be careful that they do not treat agentic systems as harmless extensions of chatbots and start recognising the new risk surface they create.
“We’re no longer dealing with tools that only give you information. Agentic AI can take action, which means that it can also take the wrong action if it’s not designed and secured properly,” he explains.
Real-world incidents highlight the risks
Recent examples highlight how easily agentic systems can be manipulated. In one case, a user tricked a commercial AI system into approving the purchase of a car for one dollar. In another, attackers trained an AI model to interpret Morse code, bypassing its English-language guardrails and triggering an unauthorised cryptocurrency transfer.
