“Guardian agents will be indispensable. … There are not enough humans to oversee everything that AI is doing.” — Daryl Plummer, Distinguished VP Analyst and Gartner Fellow

By 2026, a staggering five billion machines will be making autonomous decisions that shape our world. But as we stand on the brink of this technological era, a critical question emerges: who — or what — will ensure these machines align with our human values and interests?

Join us on this edition of CIO Mind as Distinguished VP Analyst and Gartner Fellow, Daryl Plummer, introduces us to the concept of “guardian agents” — AI systems that oversee other AI and ensure that human oversight and values are preserved and enhanced.

Episode highlights:

What is a guardian agent? (1:05)
Who oversees the guardian agents? (3:50)
How will guardians become essential in the future? ( 5:26)
How much will guardian agents cost? (7:31)
When should a CIO consider buying a guardian agent? (8:31)
Why will behavioral scientists be important for deploying guardian agents? (10:07)
Will humans or guardian agents be accountable for AI decision making? (12:18)
What other options can perform the same actions? (16:32)
As an emerging market, when will the guardian agent market reach maturity? (21:00)

About the Guest

Daryl Plummer is a distinguished VP analyst and Gartner fellow. His research focuses on the strategic issues of cloud computing, digital disruption and the unfolding of the future through predictions, trends and evolving digital business cycles. He is a chief of research in the technology and service providers organization, where he helps oversee research across the four roles of general manager, product managers, product marketers and tech CEOs. In this role, he is responsible for the advancement of research and the promotion of the same to solve the critical problems of, and answer the key questions for, tech providers from engineers all the way up to and including the CEO and board of directors. Daryl is also chief of research for cloud computing and a primary analyst covering multiple strategic cloud topics. He focuses his research on the broad cloud service market, including market trends, forecasts, the cloud vendor landscape and cloud sourcing scenarios. He tracks different cloud usage cases, including public cloud, private cloud and hybrid cloud scenarios and is the originator of the topic of distributed cloud computing. Covering cloud strategy and evolution requires one to see how end user scenarios are evolving in the context of technology and service provider strategies that are producing cloud innovations at an ever-increasing speed. Daryl Plummer provides a perspective on the key phenomena which will drive the largest segments of change.

Episode 2994 CWSA 10/20/25

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