Workday Pushes Congress to Regulate AI Agents

Enterprise software provider Workday is calling on Congress to turn its attention toward agentic artificial intelligence — autonomous systems that can take actions without human intervention — rather than continuing to focus primarily on the development of AI models.

Chandler Morse, Workday's Vice President for Public Policy, told Punchbowl News that Washington has been too preoccupied with how AI technology is built and not enough with how AI agents operate once deployed.

Why it matters

The distinction between AI development and AI agents represents a significant policy shift. While much of the congressional debate has centered on training data, compute resources, and model safety, agentic AI raises different questions about liability, decision-making authority, and accountability when systems act independently. As enterprises increasingly deploy AI agents to handle tasks like customer service, procurement, and workflow management, the regulatory gap becomes more pressing.

The policy gap on autonomous AI

Agentic AI systems differ from traditional AI tools because they can perceive their environment, make decisions, and take actions to achieve specific goals with minimal human oversight. These capabilities create regulatory challenges that existing AI policy frameworks don't adequately address.

Workday's position reflects growing industry recognition that the governance questions around AI agents — who is responsible when an agent makes a harmful decision, what guardrails should be mandatory, how to ensure transparency — require distinct policy approaches from those governing AI model development.

The company's advocacy comes as Congress has held numerous hearings on AI safety, copyright issues related to training data, and national security implications of advanced AI systems. But legislative action on AI has stalled, with no comprehensive federal AI regulation passed despite bipartisan interest.

Industry engagement with Washington

Workday's outreach is part of a broader pattern of AI companies engaging with policymakers earlier and more proactively than previous generations of technology firms. The industry has sought to avoid the regulatory backlash that social media platforms faced after years of limited Washington engagement.

However, this early engagement hasn't prevented growing skepticism toward AI companies on Capitol Hill. Lawmakers from both parties have expressed concerns about job displacement, algorithmic bias, privacy implications, and the concentration of AI capabilities among a handful of large technology companies.

The details were first reported by Punchbowl News.