IEEE forecasts agentic AI, autonomous power grids and bio-AI interfaces

IEEE is forecasting a rapid shift in how artificial intelligence is built and used, predicting that agentic AI will reach consumer mass-market adoption in 2026 and that emerging systems will reshape industries from logistics to energy and biotechnology.

In a Nov. 3, 2025 PR Newswire release datelined Piscataway, N.J., IEEE summarized results from "The Impact of Technology in 2026 and Beyond: an IEEE Global Study," a survey of technology leaders in Brazil, China, India, Japan, the U.K. and the U.S. The organization said agentic systems - autonomous software that can take multi-step actions with human oversight - are poised to become standard business tools and everyday "smart assistants" for consumers.

Supplychain247, reporting on the IEEE study on Nov. 4, 2025, cited a striking breadth of confidence among technologists: "96% of technologists worldwide expect agentic AI innovation to continue 'at lightning speed' as both established companies and startups increase investments." The coverage captured specific consumer expectations drawn from the study: 52% of respondents expect agentic AI to handle scheduling and calendar management, 45% foresee it managing personal data privacy, and 41% see it tracking health metrics.

IEEE and its affiliates signaled that enterprise adoption is already moving beyond pilots. The PR Newswire summary gave two adoption-stage snapshots for generative AI in 2026: "(39%) Using Regularly, But Selectively: Generative AI will continue to be a regular part of our work in selective areas, and adds value. (+20% from prior year)" and "(35%) Rapidly Integrating, Expecting Bottom Line Results: AI will continue to be integrated throughout all our operations. We've already seen measurable bottom line results and expect these to grow."

Industry analysts and trade press see practical consequences. Forbes warned that the scale-up of agentic AI will heighten cyber risk, writing in a set of 2026 forecasts that "There will be most likely major public agentic AI breach in 2026, accelerating demands for AI firewalls and governance. Identity, not data, will become the central focus of criminality and security." Forbes urged enterprises to embrace "AI firewalls, secure-by-design architectures, agent governance frameworks and quantum-resilient cryptography" as defensive measures.

Operational uses of agentic systems are expected to extend into logistics and manufacturing. Forbes predicted that "AI agents will reroute inventory in real time, expedite shipments, allocate maintenance resources and dynamically adjust manufacturing based on need," a capability that could deliver structural advantages to early adopters. The same conversation around industrialization appears in InformationWeek, where columnist George Lawton outlined four enterprise trends for 2026, including rising competition among large action models and other agentic approaches, and "continued maturation of physical AI, improving engineering workflows that will gradually expand across the enterprise."

InformationWeek also quoted Avancini predicting that "the combination of physical AI blueprints such as Nvidia's ecosystem and open interoperability standards (like IEEE P2874) will start to reshape industrial R&D," lowering barriers to simulations, robotics workflows and digital twins.

The IEEE study pointed to workforce shifts as well. Supplychain247 reported that employers plan to prioritize skills in AI ethics (44%), data analysis (38%), machine learning (34%) and data modeling (32%). Robotics and physical AI are prominent on the technology impact list: Supplychain247 cited robotics at 52% as a top impact area and said 77% of respondents expect humanoid robots to become common in workplaces.

Taken together, the reports portray a near-term technology landscape in which agentic AI moves from experimental to infrastructural, touching consumer lives, corporate operations and national critical systems. The surge promises productivity gains even as it sharpens demands for governance, new security tools and a workforce retooled for oversight of increasingly autonomous systems.