A quarter of Australian businesses testing new AI to do human work, Deloitte survey results show

Australian companies are increasingly testing a form of autonomous technology powered by artificial intelligence which can perform human tasks, a Deloitte survey has found.

Agentic AI using digital bots to perform human tasks were rapidly being tested by the end of 2024.

One of the most rapid advancements in artificial intelligence quietly played out across the nation in the final months of 2024 when more than a quarter of companies tested its adaptation, according to new Deloitte research.

That was the adoption of “agentic AI”, or digital bots which can autonomously perform tasks and certain job functions just as human workers would.

AI agents have been described as one of the first major outputs for companies and the digital service is effectively seen as a way to replace tasks a worker would do, Deloitte national leader for generative AI Stu Scotis said

“Considering this has only been around for about three months, for 26 per cent of our 2800 respondents to be already trialling it within a quarter is a pretty rapid rise,” he said.

“It’s probably the fastest thing that we’ve seen progress since generative AI itself was released eight or so months ago.”

About 52 per cent of respondents considered AI agents systems and 42 per cent believed multi-agent systems, were the technology that would “drive the future”.

“These software systems have ‘agency’ to complete complex tasks with little to no human intervention and act independently to achieve a specified goal,” the Deloitte report says.

The findings are contained within Deloitte’s State of Generative AI in the Enterprise Report: Now Decides Next, which found that Australia – although excited by the technology – was slow to adopt it on a broad scale.

About 8 per cent of Australian companies had adopted AI with haste compared with 14 per cent globally.

Deloitte national leader for generative AI Stu Scotis.

The reason behind slower adoption levels was in part due to regulation, Mr Scotis said.

“Our regulation, while it’s clear the direction it’s headed, it’s not finalised yet and organisations have been waiting to understand that before they actually go ahead and start implementing (AI) at scale.”

The survey found that regulatory compliance was the top challenge that 42 per cent of leaders considered when adopting generative AI.

Deloitte said the opinions about AI output were also changing. The number of Australian companies which found the use of AI was reaping significant benefits in the workplace had risen to 68 per cent of respondents, compared with just 22 per cent in the previous survey, and that they believed it helped improve innovation and risk management.

A “lack of confidence” in the results of generative AI dropped from 36 per cent to 23 per cent.

But boardroom excitement about AI’s possibilities fell from 62 per cent in the first quarter of 2024 to 46 per cent in the fourth. Similarly, excitement levels among C-suite staff dropped from 74 per cent to 59 per cent and from 64 per cent to 56 per cent for lower-level management. Levels remained steady among employees.

That could be likened to a passing of the hype phase, Mr Scotis said, sharing a similar view to that of Cisco and a recent report that found Australian companies had been given an AI reality check.

Despite the drop in excitement, 78 per cent of companies were gearing up to invest more in AI.

Originally published as A quarter of Australian businesses testing new AI to do human work, Deloitte survey results show