“AI "Agents" will be endlessly hyped throughout 2025 but far from reliable, except possibly in very narrow use cases.”

Gary MarcusResearcher

Cognitive scientist, Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Neural Science at NYU

2025 was saturated with agent marketing while reliability lagged: MIT's NANDA work produced the widely-cited finding that about 95% of internally built enterprise genAI pilots delivered no measurable return, McKinsey-style surveys found very few agents reaching production, and teams that shipped did so by narrowing scope. Independent year-end gradings scored this prediction correct.