A new study by Xiahua Wei, associate professor in the University of Washington Bothell School of Business, examines the growing role of “agentic AI,” which are autonomous systems that can make decisions and act without direct human prompts. As these AI agents become more widely used, Wei’s research highlights both their potential to improve efficiency, productivity and access, and the increased risks they pose around privacy, security, ethics and accountability.
Drawing on her interdisciplinary expertise in economics and information systems, Wei approaches AI as not just a technical tool but a system shaped by incentives, governance and institutional design. In her recent paper, she introduces an “agentic AI tradeoff framework” to help organizations and policymakers navigate key tensions, including autonomy versus control and efficiency versus oversight.
Wei emphasizes that agentic AI is here to stay, shifting the debate from whether it should be used to how it should be responsibly governed. Her ongoing work explores how these tradeoffs emerge in practice, including the use of AI in hiring and other high‑stakes decision‑making systems.