PagerDuty, Inc. released new research revealing growing executive trust in AI agents and the deepening reliance on AI across business operations. Based on responses from 1,500 IT and business executives across Australia, France, Germany, Japan, U.K. and U.S. regions, the PagerDuty AI Resilience Survey found that 81% of executives trust AI agents to take action on the company’s behalf during a crisis, such as a service outage or security event.
To read the full report, including survey findings and methodology, please visit here.
AI is moving from experimental to essential. Nearly three-quarters of executives (74%) say their company would struggle to function without it, showing how quickly reliance has grown. Projects that began as pilots and trials are now viewed as mission-critical infrastructure. Additionally, companies are increasingly using AI in software development, where more than four out of five respondents (84%) report using it to write, review, or suggest code.
Key Findings
- Agentic AI deployment is racing ahead: Three out of four (75%) companies have already deployed more than one AI agent, with a quarter (25%) deploying five or more.
- Maturing models drive confidence gains: Executives credit better outputs (49%), more frequent usage with positive results (48%), improved understanding of AI (47%), and stronger oversight measures (45%) as the top reasons for growing confidence.
- AI is now seen as mission-critical infrastructure: Nearly three in four executives (74%) view AI as essential to operations, rising to 77% for smaller companies under 10,000 employees. C-suites and owners are especially convinced, with 83% saying their business would struggle without AI compared to 73% of directors and VPs.
- Engineers are coding with AI at scale: More than four out of five (84%) companies now use AI to write, review or suggest code. Companies with multiple AI agents are even more likely to rely on AI for coding (91%) compared to those with one agent (68%) or none (44%). While 85% test AI-generated code, only 39% do so consistently through formal processes. The U.S. leads on formal testing (59%) while Japan trails at 19%.
- Guardrails lag behind increased adoption: An overwhelming 85% of executives say their organizations need better procedures to detect errors or failures in AI tools, with sentiment being highest in France (90%).
- Companies are bracing for AI outages: 84% of companies report experiencing at least one AI-related outage. More than half (57%) of those that haven’t yet had an outage already have protocols in place for handling one, showing that resilience planning is becoming part of AI strategy.
- Experience reveals the hidden complexity of AI: Among respondents whose companies have deployed one AI agent, 76% believe AI-driven complexity will outpace the number of people their company has to manage it. This concern is even higher among those with multiple AI agents at 79%. In contrast, only 57% of respondents from companies without AI agents anticipate this challenge, suggesting that hands-on experience with AI deployment reveals the true scope of management complexity involved.
“AI is central to business operations today, and forward-looking leaders are implementing the key use cases that can bring real business impact to their organizations,” said David Williams, Senior Vice President of Product at PagerDuty. “Companies that embed automation and agents into their operations will see AI drive efficiency, reduce costs, and strengthen customer trust. PagerDuty’s latest survey further illustrates how organizations are becoming increasingly reliant on AI as adoption and trust continue to gain momentum and drive business results.”
