21 Jul 2026

Scaling the Responsible Adoption of Agentic AI (techUK industry brief)

techUK has published a new industry brief on agentic AI, which sets out how organisations across the UK economy can move beyond pilots and proofs of concept to deploy agentic AI responsibly and at scale.

The brief is the culmination of a four-part workshop series convened by techUK between February and March 2026. The series ran across four sessions:

Based on the learning and insights gathered through techUK’s workshops, the brief identifies four interdependent areas that organisations need to have in place to adopt agentic AI successfully.

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We set out how progress in any one area enables progress across the others, while weakness in one has the potential to constrain the whole. The four ingredients of success are:

  • technical readiness;
  • organisational structures and ways of working;
  • workforce preparedness; and
  • governance.

The brief’s recommendations are organised around these four areas, alongside practical actions for government and regulators.

Recommendations

The recommendations below set out practical actions for organisations, government and regulators to support the responsible scaling of agentic AI.

Please download the brief to see the recommendations in full.

Actions for organisations looking to adopt and scale agentic AI 

The following actions should be considered by organisations looking to move their use of agentic AI beyond proof-of-concept and pilot stages. 

Technical readiness: tooling capabilities for agentic AI 

  • Determine the right tools for tasks and design orchestration platforms effectively. 
  • Build observability in from day one. 
  • Map processes before deploying agents. 
  • Measure whether agents are improving real outcomes. 

Organisational structures and ways of working 

  • Create clear internal structures and single ownership of agentic AI. 

Workforce preparedness: skills and capabilities needed and the future of work 

  • Build AI literacy and fluency across the workforce. 
  • Assess workforce impacts as deployment scales, including on graduate and entry-level roles. 
  • Invest in workforce readiness alongside technical deployment, including managing agentic AI fleets. 

Governance 

  • Treat governance, assurance, safety and meaningful human oversight as enablers of scale. 
  • Test shutdown, fallback and override mechanisms regularly. 
  • Use existing AI governance standards as a foundation, but complement them with more deployment-specific controls. 

Government actions to support agentic AI adoption 

Responsible scaling will depend not only on organisational readiness and action, but also on practical guidance, regulatory clarity and policy support. Workshop participants identified areas where action from government and regulators could help scale adoption. These actions are outlined below.

Frameworks and guidance 

  • Future-proof existing work on AI accountability for multi-agent contexts. 
  • Provide clearer cross-regulator guidance on agentic AI deployment. 
  • Provide more specific operational guidance from individual regulators in their own remits.  

Standards, assurance and risk management 

  • Support a more mature assurance and standards ecosystem for agentic AI deployment.

AI assurance 

  • Consider using the AI Assurance Innovation Fund, established through the Trusted Third Party AI Assurance Roadmap, to support responsible agentic AI deployment and the growth of assurance applications for agentic systems. 

Cyber security 

  • Make security testing insights more usable for organisations deploying agentic systems in production. 

Skills and the future of the workforce 

  • Make agentic AI deployment a defined research priority for the AI Economics Institute. 

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About techUK 

techUK brings together people, companies and organisations to realise the positive outcomes of digital technology. With over 1,100 members across the UK, techUK creates a network for innovation and collaboration across business, government and stakeholders. 

This brief was produced through techUK’s AI Adoption programme, which supports members of all sizes and sectors in adopting AI at scale, identifying barriers to adoption, exploring solutions, and helping to unlock AI’s transformative potential for people, the economy, society and the planet. 

Get involved 

To find out more about techUK’s work on AI adoption and how to get involved, visit the AI Hub and sign-up to our AI newsletter to stay updated.

For more information please contact: 

Usman Ikhlaq

Usman Ikhlaq

Programme Manager - Artificial Intelligence, techUK

Sue Daley OBE

Sue Daley OBE

Director, Technology and Innovation


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Kir Nuthi

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Usman Ikhlaq

Usman Ikhlaq

Programme Manager - Artificial Intelligence, techUK

Sue Daley OBE

Sue Daley OBE

Director, Technology and Innovation

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