McKinsey & Company is warning companies that artificial intelligence spending could rise as AI agents become more widely used.
Compared with text-based AI tools, agents perform multistep tasks and can take different routes to reach the same result. A McKinsey study found that the cost of completing tasks with different AI agents could vary by as much as 30 times, Business Insider reported Tuesday.
Rising AI Costs
According to the report, about one-third of organizations surveyed by McKinsey said they spend more than 10% of their technology and communications budgets on AI.
The report also said 60% planned to increase AI spending over the next year, while roughly one in five said AI spending was beginning to constrain operating costs.
McKinsey senior partner Lari Hämäläinen told the publication that the cost difference between agents can be substantial as companies use them for more complex work.
The issue is particularly relevant for software-development teams using AI agents for coding, which can require large amounts of tokens.
Companies are also exploring ways to reduce agent costs by combining more capable models with lower-cost models for different parts of a task. Box Inc. (NYSE:BOX) CEO Aaron Levie cited research showing that this approach could reduce total token costs by 15 times.
Measuring AI Value
Y Combinator co-founder Paul Graham has argued that token counts alone may not accurately measure AI inference because increasingly capable models can solve more complex problems with fewer tokens. Wells Fargo & Co. (NYSE:WFC) strategist Ohsung Kwon has also warned that rising AI inference costs could pressure AI investment.
Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) hardware chief Johny Srouji has promoted local AI processing on Macs as an alternative to recurring cloud-based token charges, saying there is "no cost per token" when businesses repeatedly use the hardware.
The report said agentic AI can reduce the time humans spend on some transformation-office tasks by 35% to 40%, with some tasks seeing reductions of 70% or more. The company said businesses need to measure whether their agents are producing enough value to justify the cost.
Disclaimer: This content was partially produced with the help of AI tools and was reviewed and published by Benzinga editors.
Image Via Shutterstock
Login to comment