CIOs are bullish on AI agents. IT employees? Not so much.

Another reason for hesitation from IT practitioners is a lack of expertise in deploying and monitoring the technology, says PagerDuty’s Armandpour, who believes some natural skepticism will dissipate as IT workers get their hands dirty. There aren’t a lot of places to learn about agents now, other than hands-on experience, he adds.

“Many folks are going to be, in a way, almost forced to learn,” he says. “Once that starts to grow, it will be this grassroots type of adoption, and there’ll be enough CIOs, CTOs, and companies that would be willing to lean in because, honestly, you’re not going to have a choice.”

In addition to concerns about a shortage of skills and deployment headaches, many IT practitioners have seen other AI projects fail in recent years, adds Rahul Chahar, co-founder and CTO of Pull Logic, a provider of inventory management software. After IT professionals have witnessed several “overpromised” AI initiatives fall flat, they may be hesitant to commit to other large-scale rollouts, he adds.