The Workplace Revolution Brought by 1,000 Assistants per Person
What Are AI Agents?
AI agents are software programs that leverage artificial intelligence technology to autonomously perform tasks on behalf of humans. Unlike traditional AI tools that passively respond to specific tasks, AI agents possess the ability to proactively make decisions and execute work while coordinating multiple tasks.
Simply put, they are like deploying excellent personal assistants in digital space who work 24/7/365. Moreover, these assistants never tire, make extremely few mistakes, and simultaneously possess multiple areas of expertise.
SoftBank Group’s Pioneering Initiatives
SoftBank Group is advancing pioneering efforts in AI agent utilization. The company has announced a “10 Billion Agent Vision” and set the ambitious goal of “1,000 AI Agents per Person.” Masayoshi Son refers to this concept as the “Thousand-Armed Avalokitesvara Project,” aiming to deploy over 1,000 AI agents per employee. Starting from the initial target of “100 agents per person,” as of September 2025, all employees have achieved the creation of 100 AI agents each, with a cumulative total exceeding 2.5 million AI agents created. This initiative is steadily expanding in scale, progressing toward the goal of 10 billion agents by year-end.
This effort has already begun producing concrete results. Actual work reduction effects are notably apparent: 70% time reduction in new graduate recruitment screening, an average of 2 hours saved per day in document preparation, and approximately 87,000 hours of annual work reduction in the corporate sales department. Furthermore, in cases combined with RPA, dramatic efficiency improvements have been realized, such as reducing tasks that previously took 200 minutes to just 1 minute, and those taking 18 minutes to 1 minute. These results demonstrate fundamental transformation of work processes beyond mere efficiency gains, meaning humans can now allocate time to creative work they should originally focus on.
Diverse Tasks Handled by AI Agents
Modern AI agents can handle an extremely wide range of tasks. Specific examples include the following:
For specialized knowledge-requiring tasks, interpretation services provide real-time multilingual translation and understanding of cultural nuances; legal support reviews contracts and conducts initial assessments of legal risks as assistance to attorney work; and tax support handles tax calculations and preparation of tax filing documents as assistance to tax accountant work.
For routine administrative tasks, meeting minutes creation automatically transcribes meeting audio into text and summarizes key points; report creation analyzes data and generates visually comprehensible reports; schedule management coordinates meeting room reservations, business trip arrangements, and hotel bookings; and expense processing handles routine administrative work such as travel expense reimbursements.
By having AI agents handle these tasks, humans can concentrate on more strategic and creativity-requiring work.
Industry-Wide Implementation Results
The effectiveness of AI agents has been demonstrated not only at SoftBank Group but across the industry. Panasonic Connect introduced their proprietary AI assistant service “ConnectAI” in February 2023, achieving a reduction of 448,000 work hours annually in fiscal 2024. This represents 2.4 times the effect compared to the previous year, equivalent to approximately 4 hours reduction per employee per month. The company’s success factors lie not in merely introducing AI tools, but in evolving AI from something to “ask” questions to something to “delegate” tasks to, establishing an environment where employees can request specific work from AI. Additionally, industry standards typically show 30-50% work efficiency improvements, with multiple cases reporting 30-75% cost reductions.
Technical Mechanisms and Characteristics
The core technology of AI agents is a combination of Large Language Models (LLM) and machine learning algorithms. Through these technologies, AI agents possess the following characteristics:
In natural language understanding, they have the ability to accurately comprehend human instructions and grasp context. Even with ambiguous expressions, they can infer intent from past interactions.
For task automation, they automatically execute complex work processes consisting of multiple steps from start to finish. For example, they process the entire flow from business trip applications to flight reservations, hotel arrangements, and expense reimbursements as an integrated sequence.
Regarding learning and adaptation, the more they are used, the more they learn organizational or individual work patterns and provide increasingly efficient and accurate support.
Implementation Considerations
While AI agent implementation brings significant benefits, the following points need simultaneous consideration:
In terms of cost efficiency, according to SoftBank’s calculations, the cost per AI agent is approximately 40 yen per month, extremely low. Even based on calculations from their contract with OpenAI valued at approximately 450 billion yen annually, the return on investment is at a sufficiently promising level.
For security and privacy, establishing security measures when handling confidential information and mechanisms for personal information protection is essential.
Regarding human-AI collaboration, it is important to maintain the principle that AI agents are merely tools to support human work, with final judgment and responsibility remaining with humans.
For continuous improvement, establishing regular feedback and improvement cycles is necessary to maximize AI agent performance.
Legal Environment Development
In 2025, the legal environment surrounding AI also made significant progress. In Japan, the “Act on Promotion of Research and Development and Utilization of Artificial Intelligence-Related Technologies” (commonly known as: AI New Act) was promulgated on June 4, 2025, and fully enforced on September 1 of the same year. This law is positioned as Japan’s first fundamental law comprehensively covering AI and includes the following important elements:
Establishment of the AI Strategy Headquarters: The Artificial Intelligence Strategy Headquarters, headed by the Prime Minister, was established within the Cabinet to function as the command center coordinating government AI policies. With all cabinet ministers participating, this strengthens inter-ministerial cooperation and enables swift and consistent policy formulation.
Through the formulation of the AI Basic Plan, the government is obligated to establish basic policies for promoting AI research and development and utilization, and to implement measures comprehensively and systematically.
As responsibilities of business operators, companies utilizing AI are required not only to improve operational efficiency but also to cooperate with national and local government initiatives. Additionally, the government can request information provision and provide guidance to businesses as necessary, with measures including public disclosure of company names anticipated for serious cases.
The greatest characteristic of this law is that while positioning AI as “the foundation for economic and social development,” it explicitly stipulates ensuring transparency to prevent “situations where citizens’ rights and interests are harmed.” It emphasizes balancing preparation for risks with promotion of innovation, with possibilities suggested for future expansion to legally binding regulations including orders and penalties.
Future Prospects
The evolution of AI agents is progressing exponentially. In the near future, the following developments are anticipated:
For multimodal compatibility, they will become capable of understanding and processing information in all formats, not just text, but also images, audio, and video.
In predictive support, they will be able to predict future needs from past patterns and provide proactive support through advance preparation and proposals.
Through deepening of specialized domains, they will be able to provide support matching human experts even in highly specialized fields such as medicine, law, and finance.
Formation of New Business Ecosystems
With the spread of AI agents, the emergence of IT vendors who analyze corporate work processes and design and build optimal AI agents is anticipated. These specialized companies will provide the following value:
In work analysis and optimization, they will analyze each company’s unique work flows in detail and clearly distinguish between areas to be automated by AI agents and areas to be handled by humans. Rather than merely introducing technology, they redesign entire work processes.
For custom agent development, rather than generic AI agents, they develop custom agents tailored to each company’s culture, rules, and industry characteristics. This includes learning specialized terminology, incorporating internal rules, and coordinating with existing systems.
For continuous improvement support, they provide ongoing support after implementation, including AI agent performance monitoring, feedback collection, and establishing improvement cycles.
With the emergence of such specialized IT vendors, even small and medium-sized enterprises can more easily benefit from AI agents. This is because they can proceed with gradual implementation while receiving support from experts, without needing to develop from scratch themselves.
As the birth of new occupations, this trend will create new job titles such as “AI Agent Architect,” “Agent Business Analyst,” and “AI Collaboration Designer.” These specialists will be required to have not only technical knowledge but also deep understanding of work processes and the ability to design optimal collaboration methods between humans and AI.
The AI agent implementation support market is expected to grow rapidly in the future. This is because as corporate DX promotion accelerates, AI agents are becoming essential elements for maintaining competitiveness. IT vendors entering this field early will gain new growth opportunities.
Summary
AI agents possess potential that goes beyond mere work efficiency tools to fundamentally transform work styles themselves. As SoftBank Group’s case demonstrates, concrete results are already emerging, such as 70% time reduction in new graduate recruitment screening and annual work reduction of 87,000 hours in the corporate sales department. In the future, even greater productivity improvements are expected through the system of 1,000 AI agents per person. Panasonic Connect’s case also demonstrates significant work reduction effects of 448,000 hours annually, validating the practicality and effectiveness of AI agents.
Legal environment development has also progressed, with the AI New Act promulgated in June 2025 establishing a foundation for promoting AI research and development and utilization in Japan. This law aims to balance innovation promotion with risk response, contributing to environmental development that allows companies to utilize AI with confidence.
What is important is to view AI agents not as “something that takes away human jobs” but as “partners that expand human capabilities and enable focus on higher-value work.” The future where excellent assistants are assigned to all employees is no longer a fantasy but becoming reality.
In the future, specialized IT vendors supporting everything from corporate work analysis to AI agent construction will play important roles. This will enable companies without specialized technical knowledge to benefit from AI agents.
To avoid falling behind this wave of technological innovation, both organizations and individuals are required to understand the possibilities of AI agents and adopt an attitude of actively utilizing them. The era of new work styles where humans and AI collaborate is about to begin right now.
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