A new hybrid office model made up of AI humans and agents, known as the “FRIF Frontier”, is starting to emerge, with more than 75% of Hong Kong business leaders expecting to extend their digital workforce in the next 12 to 18 months, according to new research from Microsoft.
The Microsoft working trends index report, based on an international survey of 31,000 people and “billion” of digital traces of the company’s omnipresent systems of the company, revealed that the integration of human and AI teams in offices is accelerating. The report, published Thursday, included a section on Hong Kong, according to which 50% of the city enrollment already used AI agents to automate their workflows and their processes.
The report also revealed that 76% of the leaders of the Hong Kong Society were “confident” that they would use “digital workforce” to increase the capacity of the workforce in the next 12 to 18 months, which would likely deploy AI agents in offices.
“Intelligence becomes abundant, affordable and available on demand,” said Microsoft in the report. While 61% of respondents said they were aimed at improving productivity, 86% of the workforce declared insufficient time or energy for their tasks, which suggests a need for AI agents at the workplace.
“Employees are interrupted 275 times a day by a meeting, an email or a cat – once every 2 minutes during working hours,” said Microsoft. As such, AI agents must be adopted so that humans can work more intelligently and “take control of their career in the AI era”, added the report.