Scaling the Responsible Adoption of Agentic AI (workshop series)
About the series
Please note, registrations for the agentic AI workshop series have now closed.
Just as generative AI was the AI innovation that took the last two years by storm, agentic AI systems are set to continue shaping the next phase of AI development and deployment in 2026.
Agentic AI systems—capable of autonomous decision-making across a variety of tasks—represent a step-change in how AI is embedded into products, services, and organisational workflows. Unlike previous AI innovations, agentic systems can plan, execute tasks independently, and coordinate with other agents to reshape entire workflows and fundamentally change how work is designed and managed.
Fleets of AI agents that can potentially coordinate tasks will reshape workflows and fundamentally change how organisations are structured and how work is designed and managed. For organisations that are able to leverage this technology, this opens huge opportunities. However, the increased use of agentic AI also raises critical questions around technical readiness, assurance, governance, organisational trust, workforce preparedness, and ethical deployment.
To shape a strong industry position on how industry can work together to help scale the responsible use of agentic AI systems, techUK’s AI and Data programme will be convening a four-part workshop series for members.
What the workshop series will explore
The workshops are open to techUK members working on the development, deployment, governance, and adoption of agentic AI. Each workshop will run as a 90 minute, in-person session hosted at techUK. Sessions will split thematically as follows:
Workshop 1: Industry best practices and routes for scaling agentic systems
18 February 2026
Where is agentic AI being deployed successfully today and what real-world use cases exist across sectors?
What technical approaches, orchestration platforms, and operating models are organisations using to implement multi-agent ecosystems effectively?
What best practices are emerging for managing visibility, governance, and coordination across agentic systems?
Is a combination of agentic AI and robotics the path to scaling the use of agentic systems and what barriers lie in the way of it?
Workshop 2: Organisational barriers and regulatory levers affecting agentic AI adoption
2 March 2026
What organisational blockers exist to the successful scaling of agentic AI adoption and how can these blockers be addressed? (e.g. orchestration and agent management platforms to infrastructure and integration challenges)
What regulatory or compliance factors could affect the pace or scope of deployment in the UK?
What talent and skills are most critical for deploying and governing agentic systems at scale, and are organisations able to access or develop them?
How do capital constraints — from upfront investment to ongoing compute and operational costs — affect the business case for scaling agentic AI?
Are there areas where the AI Opportunities Action Plan, if adjusted, could further help support the scaling of agentic systems, and which further levers (funding, policy support, standards) could support faster adoption?
Workshop 3: Workforce preparedness, agentic AI, and the future of work
18 March 2026
Does our workforce have the skills needed not just to analyse and responsibly use AI outputs, but to analyse, manage, and work alongside AI agents with decision-making capabilities?
How can we best encourage responsible understanding and confidence in agentic AI in a way that can bolster its effective and safe use?
How do we design work and working environments to augment human agency, and what does this mean for workforce trust and experience?
What does the UK need to focus on to ensure our workforce benefits from agentic technologies while minimising disruption?
Workshop 4: Importance of ethics, governance, and accountability when using agentic AI
25 March 2026
What novel concerns arise from delegating decision-making authority to autonomous agents, particularly around accountability and decision rights?
How do we approach oversight in agentic systems? What does accountability look like when agents act autonomously, and are there appropriate guardrails?
What do data consent, transparency, and automated decision-making (ADM) frameworks mean in an agentic AI world?
Following the sessions
Insights from the workshop series will feed into a short industry brief capturing how the tech sector views the opportunities, risks, and open questions facing agentic AI adoption.
This brief will:
Provide practical guidance to support confident AI adoption, including a clear understanding of the risks, benefits and operating models involved
Offer perspectives on emerging trends, opportunities to strengthen frameworks, discussions of regulatory devices, and how policy tools, including AI Opportunities Action Plan commitments, can help the UK sustain its global AI leadership in AI.
The goal of the brief is to map best practices on how to scale greater adoption, identify what issues may need to be overcome, identify where levers may be missing from current policy frameworks to support agentic AI adoption, and explore how to future-proof the UK for the next wave of agentic AI developments.
techUK’s AI and Data programme in 2026
techUK’s AI and Data programme is focused in 2026 on helping the UK seize the AI opportunity by turning vision into value – accelerating trusted real-world development and deployment of AI – to ensure the UK will lead on the next generation of AI technologies.
To get more involved, please reach out to Kir and Usman:
