Microsoft exec suggests AI agents will need to buy software licenses, just like employees
www.businessinsider.com
Are AI agents employees or tools? A Microsoft exec suggested they're new paid "seats," a shift that could reshape SaaS pricing — and spark pushback.

Buried in the story was a deceptively simple question: does your AI agent count as an employee?

At a recent conference, Microsoft executive Rajesh Jha floated a provocative idea. In a future where companies deploy fleets of AI agents, those agents may need their own identities — logins, inboxes, and even seats inside software systems. If so, AI wouldn’t shrink software revenue. It could expand it.

  • WanderingThoughts@europe.pubEnglish
    24·
    5 hours ago

    The agent immediatly makes cost-benefit analysis and moves everything to open source solutions, and contracts a coding AI agent to write a simple conversion interface.

    • pinball_wizard@lemmy.zipEnglish
      3·
      2 hours ago

      Yes! This is legitimately one of the ways the bubble may burst. Particularly if the AI gets substantially smarter, and just starts recommending full switches to existing libraries and software suites - at a cost of exactly one token, instead of churning out thousands of lines of slop code that require ongoing tokens to maintain.