What Are AI Agents and Why Is Everyone Talking About Them?
If you’ve listened to the recent episode of Steven Bartlett's Diary of a CEO podcast titled "AI Agents Emergency Debate: These Jobs Won’t Exist in 24 Months!", you’ll know the conversation around agentic AI is heating up — fast. The episode featured voices from tech, biology, and entrepreneurship including Amjad Masad, Bret Weinstein, and Daniel Priestley, debating whether AI will empower us, outsmart us, or even replace us.
The debate is timely, urgent, and packed with existential questions. But amid the noise, one truth is emerging clearly: purpose-built AI agents are already reshaping the way we work — and for insights professionals and researchers, they offer a massive opportunity.
Is AI a Threat or a Tool for Researchers?
Yes, the concerns are real: AI threatens to displace millions of jobs, education is lagging behind, and the pace of change is dizzying. But there's another, more empowering narrative running alongside: AI agents, when designed with care and utility in mind, can unburden us from the repetitive, the mundane, and the slow.
At Yabble, we see this not as a crisis, but as a shift. A shift toward more strategic, creative, and human-focused work — supported by tools that take the busy work off your plate.
How Is Yabble's Gen Changing the Research Game?
Meet Gen — Yabble's AI research agent.
Gen is not here to replace researchers. It’s here to accelerate them. Gen lets you chat with your structured and unstructured data just like you would with a colleague. Ask it a question about your dataset and it returns answers instantly: summaries, tables, filtered variables — all in plain language.
It’s a secure, conversational, and incredibly powerful way to work with your own proprietary insights. Whether you're answering stakeholder questions, building research reports, or surfacing trends, Gen turns hours of work into minutes.
Why Should Market Researchers Use AI Agents Like Gen?
The Diary of a CEO episode rightly points out the paradox we’re facing: AI is both democratizing power and concentrating it. For those who embrace it thoughtfully, tools like Gen unlock:
- Speed-to-Insight: Say goodbye to lengthy desk research. Ask, explore, and iterate instantly.
- Data Confidence: Stay in control of your proprietary data within a secure, walled-garden environment.
- Empowered Teams: Give non-technical users access to powerful data tools without needing a data science degree.
- Time for Strategy: Free your team from manual work and focus on what really moves the needle — creative thinking and high-value decision-making.
If you're curious about how this shift is playing out in practice, Yabble CEO and Founder Kathryn Topp dives deep into the role of AI agents in insights and marketing in our on-demand webinar, "AI Agents: Ditch the Pivot Tables".
👉 The full webinar is embedded below.
A Call for Mindful Adoption
The takeaway isn’t to blindly embrace AI agents or reject them out of fear. It’s to recognize that the future of work will be co-authored by tools like Gen. That means researchers and marketers who experiment early, learn fast, and build trust with these new tools will be the ones who thrive.
Let’s not wait for the dust to settle. Let’s start shaping the future of insights now.
If you’re interested in seeing what Gen could do for your data, we’d love to show you. Book a free demo or explore Gen inside the Yabble platform.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is an AI agent in market research?
- An AI agent in market research is a tool that can autonomously interact with data, answer questions, and generate insights using natural language — like Yabble’s Gen.
How does Gen differ from ChatGPT?
- Gen is trained to work directly with your proprietary data in a secure environment, offering tailored insights specific to your business needs — unlike general-purpose AI chatbots.
Can AI replace researchers?
- Not entirely. Tools like Gen are designed to support researchers by handling repetitive tasks, freeing up time for more strategic and creative work.
