Most AI Agents Fail
And it's not the AI's fault - it's the mess we're feeding it.
Hey everyone,
Like you, I’m living in the bubble where everyone is talking about AI and agents. Everyone is trying to sound smarter and more like an expert, battling over who has figured things out. And I kind of like the energy and the phase we are in… this is exactly what we need to really figure things out.
But what nobody is talking about is that most AI agents fail (or will fail). People are embellishing the narrative that “AI replaced their marketing team” or “I have 12 agents running all of my operational work”. In most cases, this is BS.
Remember what AI is doing: working with the data we provide. And here is the breaking point.
Having worked with dozens of companies in the past, I’ve seen the same picture every time: messy CRMs, outdated properties, complex Excel sheets that would need a full handbook for explanation, and tools upon tools where data is stored in multiple places and nobody knows where to find things.
So how should an AI agent help us with our work when we can’t even understand how our own organization is built? Not AI fails, we are failing.
We are seeing that AI agents can do reliable work - yes. But we, as humans, are failing to give them the foundation they need to do it.
And then we blame the agents by saying: “AI is still hallucinating too much”.
AJ
Subscribe to The Growth Diary
By Andreas Just