External signal·MIT Sloan Management Review (with Boston Consulting Group)·Sep 1, 2025·Sam Ransbotham, David Kiron, Shervin Khodabandeh, Shaheer Iyer, and Abhishek Das·10 min read
Agentic AI at Scale: Redefining Management for a Superhuman Workforce
“Today's workflows were not built with the speed and scale of AI in mind, so addressing gaps will require new governance models, clearer decision pathways, and redesigned processes that make it possible to trace, audit, and intervene in AI-driven decisions.”
Summary
Drawing on an international expert panel and a spring 2025 global survey of 1,221 executives, MIT Sloan Management Review and BCG ask whether holding agentic AI accountable requires new management approaches. A clear majority (69%) of panelists agree it does, arguing that the autonomy, speed, and opacity of agentic systems break management models built for deterministic tools and human-paced work; a solid minority (25%) push back, warning that 'AI exceptionalism' deflects from holding named humans accountable. Practitioners quoted include GitHub's Shelley McKinley, Standard Chartered's David Hardoon, Nasdaq's Douglas Hamilton, Mastercard's Shamina Singh, and Mozilla's Mark Surman. The piece distinguishes agentic AI by its need for explicitly defined rules, decision thresholds, escalation paths, and life-cycle oversight, and offers five recommendations, including preparing for AI systems that create other AI systems.
Predictions for the future of work
The article predicts a 'superhuman workforce' in which humans increasingly collaborate with, supervise, and manage AI agents as if they were team members, shifting managerial work toward defining boundaries, monitoring, and escalation rather than direct task execution. It foresees managers needing new oversight skills and organizations needing new sanctioning and accountability mechanisms, since AI lacks legal personhood. The affected group is managers and knowledge workers across software engineering, customer service, and other functions where agent deployment is rising; the horizon is near-to-medium term.
Originally published by MIT Sloan Management Review (with Boston Consulting Group) · Sep 1, 2025
Read the original at MIT Sloan Management Review (with Boston Consulting Group)