{"id":315007,"date":"2025-12-14T04:27:12","date_gmt":"2025-12-14T04:27:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/315007\/"},"modified":"2025-12-14T04:27:12","modified_gmt":"2025-12-14T04:27:12","slug":"the-next-phase-of-ai-is-agentic-and-it-starts-with-data-architecture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/315007\/","title":{"rendered":"The next phase of AI is agentic, and it starts with data architecture"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you look at the last decade of AI progress, most of it has been measured in a single dimension: bigger models and better benchmarks<\/a>.<\/p>\n

That approach worked for a while, but we\u2019re now running into the limits of what \u201cbigger\u201d can buy.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The next breakthrough isn\u2019t about cranking parameters into the billions. It\u2019s about the architecture underneath, the part most people don\u2019t see but absolutely feel when it isn\u2019t working.<\/p>\n

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Derek Slager<\/p>\n

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CTO and co-founder, Amperity.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s where agentic AI comes in. Not agents as a buzzword, but as a practical shift in how intelligence is distributed.<\/p>\n

Instead of one model waiting for a prompt and producing an answer, you get groups of smaller, purpose-built agents that watch what\u2019s happening, reason about it, and act.<\/p>\n

The intelligence is in how they collaborate, not in one giant model doing everything.<\/p>\n

Once you start thinking about it that way, the conversation shifts from \u201cWhat can the model do?\u201d to \u201cWhat does the system let the model do?\u201d And that\u2019s all architecture.<\/p>\n

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From Generative Answers to Ongoing Loops<\/p>\n

Generative AI changed how people interact with software<\/a>, sure. But the pattern hasn\u2019t changed much: question in, answer out, and then everything resets.<\/p>\n

Agentic systems don\u2019t operate like that. They stay alert. They respond to signals you didn\u2019t explicitly ask about, like changes in customer<\/a> behavior, shifts in demand, and little anomalies that usually slip past dashboards.<\/p>\n

And the biggest difference is time. These aren\u2019t one-off tasks. Agents run loops. They observe, decide, try something, and come back when the situation shifts. It looks a lot more like how teams actually work when they\u2019re at their best.<\/p>\n

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But none of that coordination works without shared context. If you have one agent basing decisions on unified profiles and another pulling from a stale, duplicated dataset, you\u2019re going to get drift. And once agents drift, they stop being intelligent and start being unpredictable.<\/p>\n

Unified Data Isn\u2019t Optional Anymore<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve all known that fragmented data is annoying. In agentic systems, it becomes dangerous. Agents operate in parallel, and they need the same understanding of customers, products<\/a>, events<\/a> \u2014 everything. Otherwise, you get contradictory decisions that only show up after damage is done.<\/p>\n

A unified, identity-resolved layer becomes the shared memory. It\u2019s what keeps agents grounded and lets them collaborate instead of stepping on each other. This isn\u2019t a philosophical point. Without that shared memory, agents \u201clearn\u201d different realities, and your system becomes incoherent fast.<\/p>\n

Ecosystems, Not Monoliths<\/p>\n

For years, enterprises<\/a> gravitated toward big, do-everything platforms because they were afraid that stitching systems together would break things. Ironically, agentic AI flips that idea on its head.<\/p>\n

Instead of giant platforms, you get small, specialized agents that talk to each other, almost like microservices, except they\u2019re reasoning, not just processing.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the catch: it\u2019s not enough for these agents to simply exchange data. They have to interpret the data in the same way. That\u2019s where interoperability becomes a real engineering challenge.<\/p>\n

The APIs matter less than the meaning attached to them. Two agents should receive the same signal and reach the same basic understanding of what it represents.<\/p>\n

Get this wrong and you don\u2019t have autonomy \u2014 you have chaos.<\/p>\n

But when it works, you get an environment where you can add or upgrade agents without every change turning into a rewrite. The system gets smarter over time rather than more brittle.<\/p>\n

Designing for AI from the Beginning<\/p>\n

Many teams today still treat AI as a plug-in, something you add to an existing system after everything else is in place.<\/p>\n

That approach just doesn\u2019t work with agentic systems. You need data models designed for evolving schemas, governance that can handle autonomous behavior, and infrastructure<\/a> built for feedback loops, not one-time transactions.<\/p>\n

In an AI-first architecture, intelligence isn\u2019t a feature. It\u2019s part of the plumbing. Data moves in ways that support long-running decisions. Schemas evolve. Agents need context that lasts longer than a single request. It\u2019s a different mindset from traditional software design, closer to designing ecosystems than applications.<\/p>\n

Humans Aren\u2019t Going Anywhere<\/p>\n

There\u2019s always a worry that \u201cagentic AI\u201d means people step aside. The reality is sort of the opposite. Agents take on the minute-by-minute decision loops, but humans define the goals, priorities, boundaries, and tradeoffs that make those loops meaningful.<\/p>\n

It actually makes oversight easier. Instead of reviewing every action, people look for patterns \u2014 drift, bias, misalignment \u2014 and course-correct the system as a whole. One person can guide a lot of agents because the job shifts from giving instructions to refining intent.<\/p>\n

Humans bring the judgment. Agents bring the stamina.<\/p>\n

Where This All Leads<\/p>\n

Agentic AI isn\u2019t just the next model trend. It\u2019s a shift in how intelligence<\/a> gets embedded into systems. But autonomy without the right architecture will never produce the outcomes people expect.<\/p>\n

You need unified data so that agents are aligned. You need interoperable systems so agents can communicate. And you need infrastructure designed for a long-lived context and continuous learning.<\/p>\n

If generative AI was about answers, agentic AI is about ongoing intelligence, and that only works if the architecture underneath it is built for the world it\u2019s operating in.<\/p>\n

Read up on our list of the best data visualization tools<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If you look at the last decade of AI progress, most of it has been measured in a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":315008,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[554,733,4308,86,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-315007","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-technology","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom","14":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315007","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=315007"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315007\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/315008"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=315007"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=315007"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=315007"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}