Skip to Content
Agentic AI For Dummies
book

Agentic AI For Dummies

by Pam Baker
January 2026
Beginner
352 pages
9h 8m
English
For Dummies
Content preview from Agentic AI For Dummies

Chapter 13

Scoping the Future of Agency

IN THIS CHAPTER

Bullet Giving Agentic AI goals, not consciousness

Bullet Weighing how AI affects humanity’s self-perception

Bullet Working with synthetic and collective intelligence

Bullet Predicting the Agentic AI future

Scoping the future of AI agency means looking beyond today’s early Agentic AI experiments and imagining what happens when autonomous, goal-driven systems become deeply woven into the fabric of work, commerce, and society. Agency in this context doesn’t just refer to AI agents acting on their own; it’s about how much independence in actions the agents hold while systems and uses progress. While organizations adopt agentic systems, questions arise about who or what sets the goals for system operations, how to measure outcomes for accuracy and effectiveness, and what guardrails ensure that Agentic AI systems continue to act in alignment with human values. (See Chapter 7 for more information about the topic of alignment.)

This chapter explores the possibilities and tensions that come with giving machines more agency. I offer a look at what a future of distributed ...

Become an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
and much more.

Read now

Unlock full access

More than 5,000 organizations count on O’Reilly

AirBnbBlueOriginElectronic ArtsHomeDepotNasdaqRakutenTata Consultancy Services

QuotationMarkO’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.
Julian F.
Head of Cybersecurity
QuotationMarkI wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.
Addison B.
Field Engineer
QuotationMarkI’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.
Amir M.
Data Platform Tech Lead
QuotationMarkI'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.
Mark W.
Embedded Software Engineer

You might also like

RAG-Driven Generative AI

RAG-Driven Generative AI

Denis Rothman
What Is AI?

What Is AI?

Emmanuel Henri
How AI Works

How AI Works

Ronald T. Kneusel

Publisher Resources

ISBN: 9781394379606