A term that I’ve been hearing about a lot recently is AI agents, so I decided to dig into it a little more to understand what it means and to see what (if any) benefits it might bring.
The term AI agent is described as:
An artificial intelligence (AI) agent is a system that autonomously performs tasks by designing workflows with available tools.
https://www.ibm.com/think/topics/ai-agents
Here’s another link:
https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/mckinsey-explainers/what-is-an-ai-agent
In summary, an agent serves as an autonomous function that utilizes different tools to complete a task. It can learn and make “decisions” based on parameters or the goal it is programmed to do. For instance, think of a customer service interface that is powered by an AI agent. Depending on what answers the customer gives, it can have a conversation with the user for the desired outcome. Another example that’s often used is when a bank deploys an agent to approve a bank loan. The required documents are fed into the agent and it will process, do credit checks and all the other steps needed to approve (or deny) a loan request.
Contrast this to a chat bot which just responds to prompts, requiring additional prompts to continue the conversation, or “chat”. A chat bot won’t take the request from beginning to end without the prompting from the user. This can be difficult at times when you don’t know what to ask next if you’re still not getting your desired outcome.
As noted in the article, there are different types of agents and can be quite complex. But for now, we’re all using agents and I for one will continue to incorporate them into my work.
Analyst To AI 