Most organizations that have invested in process automation have a complicated relationship with the results. The promise was clear: reduce manual effort, eliminate errors, free up people for higher-value work, cut operational costs. And in some cases, the promise was delivered repetitively, rule-based processes were automated successfully, and the benefits were real. But for every automation success story, there are two or three projects that underdelivered. Automations that are too brittle to rely on. Processes that were automated in theory but still require constant human intervention in practice. ROI calculations that looked convincing in the business case and disappointing in the quarterly review. Understanding why automation projects underdeliver and how AI agents solve the problems that traditional automation couldn't is the most important automation conversation happening in enterprise technology right now. The Problem: Why Traditional Automation Has a Ceiling RPA is brittle by design.…