According to Computerworld, Pedro Bados, the CEO and co-founder of Nexthink, believes AI-powered “personal IT managers” are the next frontier for boosting workplace productivity. He argues that while generative AI adoption is often slow, digital employee experience (DEX) tools can give companies the insights needed to understand and guide that usage. Bados revealed that AI has been central to Nexthink’s identity since the company spun out of a Swiss AI lab two decades ago, a move he jokes happened “probably 20 years too early.” His vision involves automated AI agents handling mundane IT tasks, which would theoretically free up human IT teams to focus on more strategic work. The core idea is to use DEX data to make generative AI assistants more effective and integrated for every single employee.
The personal IT agent vision
So, what does a “personal IT manager” actually look like? Basically, it’s an always-on AI agent that knows your specific tech environment. It would automatically fix that recurring printer driver issue, preemptively warn you that your laptop battery is degrading before it dies in a meeting, or guide you through setting up a secure connection without you having to call the help desk. The promise is huge: less friction for employees and a massive reduction in tier-1 support tickets for IT. But here’s the thing: this isn’t just about a smarter chatbot. It’s about an agent that has deep, contextual awareness of your device, your applications, and your company’s IT policies. That requires a ton of data integration, which is where Nexthink’s DEX platform, recognized in reports like the Gartner Magic Quadrant for DEX, comes in. They’re betting that their existing sensor data is the perfect fuel for these advanced AI agents.
The monitoring dilemma
Now, this vision immediately runs into a classic workplace tech dilemma. Bados says DEX is key to understanding *how* employees use generative AI. That’s code for monitoring. And look, from an IT security and compliance perspective, that’s completely logical. You need to know if people are pasting sensitive code into a public ChatGPT window. But from an employee perspective, the idea of your “personal IT manager” also being a “corporate AI monitor” feels a bit… double-edged. Will workers trust an agent that’s both helping them and reporting on them? Companies will have to be transparent about what data is collected and how it’s used, or this could backfire spectacularly and create more resistance, not less.
Is the tech ready?
Bados has a point about being early. Nexthink’s AI roots are in traditional machine learning for IT analytics, not the large language models driving today’s hype. That foundational experience with dirty, real-world IT data is actually a huge advantage. The big question is whether the current generation of AI agents is robust enough to handle the infinite complexity of an employee’s digital experience. Can it reliably differentiate between a user error and a software bug? I think we’re seeing the very beginning of this shift. The first “agents” will be glorified, context-aware automations. The true autonomous personal IT manager that can reason through novel problems? That’s probably still a few years and many, many IT headaches away. But the direction is clear. The help desk ticket as we know it is living on borrowed time.
