Digital Workers: The CIO's New It Multiplier
Search CIO, Thursday, January 8th, 2026
CIOs are being asked to scale IT output without scaling teams. Autonomous digital workers are reshaping how leaders drive reliability, governance and execution across IT.
Today's CIOs face growing demands to increase output, remain reliable and innovate faster - all while trying to reduce budgets and head count.
The rapid advancement of AI and intelligent automation technology has opened the door to more independent, goal-oriented AI - known as agentic AI - that can be used as "digital employees or workers" to complete end-to-end tasks and workflows. Digital employees - or AI-powered software applications -- function as virtual workers to handle repetitive processes and tasks, allowing human staff to focus on more strategic activities.