How the CIO role is shifting in the agentic AI era
Enterprise technology leaders should help businesses define the scenarios in which agents can operate with full autonomy — or kept out of operations entirely.
Published Sept. 11, 2026
By Eric Johnson
Editor’s note: The following is a guest post from Eric Johnson, CIO at PagerDuty.
The CIO role once centered on delivering reliable infrastructure and secure systems on a predictable timetable. But with the rapid adoption of AI agents in the workplace, the CIO’s job description is changing at its core, pushing beyond technology deployment into the more complex matter of human judgment.
When AI agents are used in autonomous workflows, they can make decisions, navigate ambiguity and act without a human in the loop. However, most CIOs are only now beginning to reckon with what happens when software can act independently.
Just 11% of CIOs and CTOs feel fully prepared for the scale of AI agent deployment expected over...
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