Agentic AI: Survey Says Guardrails Lag Behind Scaling Efforts

According to this Deloitte report, organizations throughout the world are proceeding full speed ahead with development of Agentic AI tools, but most are doing so without having mature governance systems in place:

According to a recent Deloitte survey of 3,235 information technology and business leaders from 24 countries across the Americas, Asia Pacific, Europe, and the Middle East—all of whom have direct involvement in their organizations’ AI programs—only 21% of respondents say their organizations have a mature governance model in place for agentic AI. The survey findings, published in Deloitte’s 2026 State of AI in the Enterprise report, reveal that agentic AI usage is scaling quickly among respondent organizations.

By 2027, 74% of respondents expect their companies to be using AI agents at least “moderately.” Of those respondents, 23% expect to use it “extensively,” and 5% expect to fully integrate agents as a core component of their business operations Yet approximately 80% of the organizations surveyed currently lack mature governance capabilities for agentic AI, such as clear boundaries for agents that define which decisions they can make independently versus which require human approval, real-time monitoring systems that track agent behavior and flag anomalies, and audit trails that capture the full chain of agent actions to help ensure accountability and enable continuous improvement.

The report warns that absent appropriate guardrails, AI agents can “make unseen mistakes, work at cross purposes, reveal sensitive information, offend a customer, invite a cyberattack, and more.” Failing to address governance challenges before businesses scale Agentic AI projects to full production could compound these risks.