AI Agents in 2026: What They Can Do and Why Companies Still Need Humans

Not in production environments. The safest and most effective pattern is task‑specific, tool‑using, and supervised, with approvals for impactful actions.

Prompt injection and insecure output handling. Validate inputs, sanitize outputs, and scope permissions to the minimum needed for the job.

Pick one KPI like handle time, decision latency, or cost per task. Publish a weekly scorecard and expand only when the metric improves for two sprints.