Rise of the AI 'agents': How 'synthetic employees' are going to affect 'every ... trends now

Imagine the dream employee: They don't take breaks, go on vacation or request meetings.

For some industries, this type of worker could soon be hired.

In recent months several companies have announced they are building AI agents, or 'synthetic employees.'

These digital workers could upend the workplace as we know it - answering emails, organizing invoices, responding to customer service inquiries and managing a calendar - possibly doing away with admin employees or pricey third-party technology. 

DailyMail.com spoke to Ed Broussard, CEO of the artificial intelligence company Tomoro.AI, who said the productivity boost offered by these synthetic employees will be so great it will lead to a three-day workweek.

Mr Broussard, whose company works with Sam Altman’s OpenAI, told DailyMail.com the next two years will see leaps and bounds of progress with these types of workers. 

Recently, Nvidia, an AI tech company, and Hippocratic AI, a medical AI company announced they would be collaborating on 'AI healthcare agents.'

The companies hope their new AI nurses can address the healthcare shortage worldwide.

Hippocratic researchers said the 'nurses' will be trained 'on a massive collection of proprietary data, including clinical care plans, healthcare regulatory documents, medical manuals, drug databases and other high-quality medical reasoning documents.'

So far, the AI healthcare workers have been tested by more than 1,000 nurses and 100 doctors in the US.  

Earlier this month, Cognition, an AI software company, was the first to make an autonomous artificial intelligence software engineer, which it named Devin. 

Devin can create websites and code apps on its own within 20 minutes and is capable of using the internet to teach itself skills. 

The 'engineer' was tasked with going on Reddit to take website building requests - and decided - on its own - to start charging money, according to a Twitter thread posted by Wharton professor Ethan Mollick.

Devin is available for hire, though there is a long waitlist. 

In addition to AI workers, companies are already using AI-augmented applications, with 40 percent of human resources functions at companies across the world using the automated technology, BBVA OpenMind reported. 

The AI workforce is just getting started. 

Mr Broussard told DailyMail.com he believes the progress that will be made in just the next two years will be more significant than all advances seen in the industry in the previous 75 - adding that by the end of the decade, every office job will be ‘transformed’ by AI agents.