The future of RPA ties to AI agents

“RPA is still relevant for automating rule-based, repetitive, and redundant tasks, especially in industries where there is a big downside for an error like banking, insurance, and healthcare,” says Arjun Bali, staff data scientist at Rocket Mortgage. “It is not yet being replaced, but augmented with AI, allowing for smarter decisions within workflows.”

Adaptable vs. cost

While AI agents offer a powerful, adaptable, and autonomous approach to automation, good, old RPA, with its predictable outcomes, still has a place, says Shae Khan, AI research scientist at the IBM MIT AI Lab.

AI tools may eventually replace some RPA deployments, but RPA can be cheaper and faster to deploy, while being less prone to errors than most AI tools, Khan adds.