Intelligent Agents automate knowledge work

E-mail, Internet and digital news coverage - electronic media should actually make work easier. In reality, however, managers and executives are in danger of drowning in the increasing flood of information. Such a development is undoubtedly problematic, as everyday information overload slows down the performance of each individual and thus also the productivity of the company.  

Rightly so, our ecosystem startup AGENTS.inc, founded in 2016, asks whether managers and executives can "keep up with everything that's happening in their industry?".
In order to better manage the daily data tsunami as a result, the Berlin-based healthcare startup is building artificial intelligence technology to equip companies with AI agents that work at superhuman speeds, automate knowledge tasks, and save valuable resources for companies on a massive scale.

In an interview with 5-HT, Dr. Tatjana Samsonowa-Denef, CEO & Co-Founder, provides exciting insights into the work and vision of the startup AGENTS.inc. 

How would you explain your solution in three sentences to a professional colleague from the health sector?

"The amount of data on our planet grows exponentially and humans are not capable to be on top of all the information. Our intelligent agents automate knowledge work, they help humans make to better decisions. The agents are using AI technology to find, summarise, translate information from more than 150 countries within minutes. Our Software-as-a-Service allows users to give tasks to agents, and the agents come back within minutes with reports, spreadsheets, or alerts. Our agents find companies and monitor them, they analyse the world of technology and provide real-time information on critical political and policy developments. Compared to other solutions, AGENTS.inc provides a single platform where agents combine data from very different data sources."

What problem motivated you to start the company?

"We started as a research team at Fraunhofer, working on the future of work. We explored a range of ideas of how software can help creative minds, and why our work software systems were so dull and so remote from visions and concepts we saw in the world of computer science. That is when we started to speak about the role of agents and how to make people and agents work together.

Intelligent agents were a concept we only found in science fiction movies: Agents that autonomously work and continuously sense the environment. We all know Star Trek and the starship Enterprise, where the access to the knowledge of all galaxies is easily accessible via the computer, androids in Star Wars, or the advanced, artificially intelligent, self-aware, and nearly indestructible car KITT in the Knight Rider movie.

We decided the time is now to turn visions and computer science into reality and to radically change how we interact with computers."

How do you convince a pharmaceutical company, a health insurance company or another potential client to set up a pilot project with you?

"It is very easy to design AI solutions and pilots that work 60% of the time. We are not satisfied by that. Our dedicated team goes the extra mile. Using our modular agents platform, we produce intelligent agents that outperform manual work in quality, run 1000x faster and lower costs 100x.

We have built a track record of transforming pilots into productive use cases 100% of the time at Bayer and Petrobras. Our agents enhance the company's internal information with the signals, trends, news from the outside.

This way companies can react much faster for example to the supply chain incidents, or can get within minutes relevant patents, and patent classes to their planned patent, and with it, they all are making better decisions."

Who are your current customers (groups) and who do you want your potential customers to be?

"Our intelligent agents work at organizations like Bayer, Petrobras, or Fraunhofer and perform the following tasks:

• Supply Chain (Sourcing and Monitoring), e.g. search for new suppliers for a cream in a specific region.

• Compliance, e.g. search and monitor the entire planet for changes in trade agreements, sanctions, etc.

• R&D, search, and monitor for newest technologies, newest inventions and patents and scientific publications.

• Public and Government Relations, monitor all 10 minutes publicly stated opinions of politicians regarding a topic related to the company.

Our agents are running for companies from around the globe, in the Americas, Europe and Asia."

Where do you see yourself in 3 years and how can 5-HT support you? 

"We are building the leading Digital Workforce Provider and a new type of software that works autonomously for our users, while they sleep. We envision companies hiring Agents as digital employees to support humans in getting jobs done 1000x faster and cheaper. We envision a global agent marketplace, with companies that invest in custom agents, as agent usage provides a return on investment. 5-HT could act as a mediator: as a knowledge matching platform, knowing customers' pains and helping solve those with our AI agents."