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NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang made a bold prediction at CES 2025 this January: "The IT department of every company is going to be the HR department of AI agents in the future."
Given the growing focus on agentic AI in the workplace, the statement ignited discussions about the evolving role of IT teams as companies look to integrate AI agents into their workflows. Huang’s vision suggests a future where IT professionals move beyond infrastructure management to overseeing the hiring, training and optimization of AI systems — essentially acting as HR for artificial intelligence.
'Exquisite Irony'
Huang is offering a complex choice, Work3 Institute CEO and co-founder and Harvard Business Review contributor Deborah Perry Piscione said.
"The irony is exquisite,” she told Reworked. "At precisely the moment when human expertise in managing organizational complexity becomes most critical, tech leaders are suggesting we hand the keys to IT departments — the very groups that have historically struggled most with human factors in technology adoption."
“This is like asking a physicist to conduct an orchestra because they understand the wave functions of sound,” she said.
Irony aside, the reality is far more complex. As AI reshapes our workplaces, HR professionals aren't becoming obsolete, they're becoming indispensable, Perry Piscione added.
Companies that have successfully integrated AI report that technical implementation accounts for less than 30% of the challenge. The real hurdles are culture adaptation, skills transformation and organizational resistance, the very domains where HR professionals excel and IT departments historically flounder.
The future workplace isn't a data center for human capital, she continued. It's a complex adaptive system where human and artificial intelligence must seamlessly interweave.
“Managing this requires something far beyond technical proficiency — it demands a sophisticated understanding of human psychology, organizational behavior and cultural dynamics,” Perry Piscione said.
The most forward-thinking organizations already recognize this. They're not diminishing their HR departments in favor of IT. Rather, they're transforming them into strategic centers that guide the human side of digital transformation. These HR leaders are becoming hybrid experts, as comfortable discussing human potential as they are debating algorithmic bias.
“That's not a technical challenge. It's a human one. And it requires human expertise that no IT department, no matter how sophisticated, can provide,” Perry Piscione said.
Let's Start by Acknowledging AI Agents Are Software, Not Humans
IT departments in large organizations are highly sophisticated, responsible for building and maintaining complex systems that serve tens of thousands — if not millions — of users. However, the idea of IT functioning as the "HR department" for AI agents oversimplifies the reality, David Vidoni at Pegasystems said. AI agents aren't human employees, he continued. Instead, they are software-driven entities that require structured workflows, governance and compliance measures.
While IT departments are well-positioned to manage AI from a technical standpoint, introducing and overseeing AI agents calls for a refined approach, one that emphasizes accountability, auditing and process adherence. Vidoni suggests that rather than viewing IT as the "HR" for AI agents, we should view this evolution as an extension of IT’s existing role in software management.
AI agents, in this context, are tools embedded into workflows rather than autonomous "employees" needing HR oversight. “To support this vision, HR must closely partner with IT to ensure the policies and procedures are clearly documented for different regions. Once this foundation of information is available, IT can enable very capable AI Agents to deliver value and self-service in the autonomous enterprise,” he said.
For this change to happen, IT professionals must extend their expertise beyond traditional infrastructure and security. They need to understand how AI-driven decisions align with business policies, ensure compliance with industry regulations, and collaborate with HR, finance and operations teams to integrate AI into everyday workflows.
Instead of acting as direct “managers” of AI agents, Vidoni said, IT leaders should serve as architects of structured, AI-powered systems that enhance efficiency while maintaining accountability. This includes determining the scope of information AI agents can access and ensuring that recommendations are made transparently based on verified data — a practice that will foster trust among users.
The shift in oversight also brings significant implications for HR. Vidoni envisions a future where HR experiences less manual work and more strategic oversight. With AI handling routine tasks — such as basic tickets, benefits inquiries or requests derived from existing HR knowledge libraries — HR teams can redirect their focus towards talent development, enhancing employee experiences and workforce planning.
IT and HR Must Evolve
Workato CIO Carter Busse highlighted several challenges to overcome in this transition. To start, IT professionals need to strengthen their emotional intelligence, business acumen and understanding of how AI-powered agents can enhance rather than replace human work.
This will require skills in sensitivity, communication and change management, especially when facing employee resistance to change. On a practical level, organizations will have to curate clean, well-organized knowledge to improve agent performance — a task that can be challenging since many employees tend to avoid writing things down. Moreover, mastering prompt engineering is becoming increasingly vital to ensure that AI agents return the right answers and perform effectively.
“HR departments must evolve as the workforce becomes more tech-integrated,” Busse said. While HR will still manage people, he believes IT teams will take on HR functions for AI agents, such as handling their maintenance, updates and ethical oversight.
In these scenarios, HR will take on oversight of the collaboration between human employees and AI agents, ensuring that any such interactions enhance productivity while also maintaining employee well-being. They also must be ready to address any mistakes made by AI agents — such as providing incorrect or offensive responses or mishandling personal or confidential information.
Through this collaborative evolution, IT and HR will together make sure AI creates more efficient, accountable and user-friendly systems, ultimately transforming how organizations operate.
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Applying Lessons From HR to Agentic AI
HR leaders and subject matter experts should be brought into the conversation around agentic AI, Intelligence Briefing founder and Chief AI Strategist Andreas Welsch told Reworked. He sees agentic AI as an opportunity for HR to extend their competence and relevance in the workplace, because most of the rules and processes that apply to human team members will also apply to AI agents. This will be particularly important to deliver a unified company image and service to customers and stakeholders, he continued.
“Positioning IT as the 'HR for AI agents' will lead to unforeseen consequences in the workplace, just like asking HR to integrate and operate a new communication platform would. That’s why traditionally separate departments and competencies have existed,” he said.
Welsch said to keep in mind that many IT departments are also not particularly skilled with AI and barely have traditional AI or even generative AI use cases deployed, aside from Copilot.
IT departments will need to manage the complexity of AI agents by replicating the role definition, proficiency, onboarding, evaluation, learning, reward and compliance processes that the HR domain has built over decades, he continued. Agent management should draw from these lessons, Welsch said, by answering crucial questions including:
- Persona (cultural fit): How do we want the agent to behave and communicate?
- Scope of work (job description): What is the agent expected to work on?
- Responsibility (seniority): What is the agent allowed to do?
- Policy adherence (code of conduct): How is the agent expected to behave?
- Rewards (compensation): What incentives should we create to motivate goal achievement?
- Planning (workforce analysis): How do we know we need more AI agents?
- Collaboration (organizational structure): What teams, roles, and collaboration between them do we need?
Read more about agentic AI developments:
- Salesforce Brings an End to 'Work of Work' — With Agentforce 2.0, Salesforce envisions a future of work where thousands of agents pick up the slack in Slack and beyond.
- Rethink Your HR Strategy to Include AI Agents — As AI agents make their way into our workforce, HR is called to adapt its workforce strategy.
- Will Your Next Hire Be an AI Agent? — Autonomous AI agents are making their way into every corner of the workplace. A look at where we are and where we're headed.