What is an AI agent?

Let’s start with something “textbook”: What is an AI agent?

According to a Google Cloud blog post,

AI agents are software systems that use AI to pursue goals and complete tasks on behalf of users. They show reasoning, planning, and memory and have a level of autonomy to make decisions, learn, and adapt.

So AI agents are something that should be capable of finishing certain tasks in a domain, kind of like a less general AGI (artificial general intelligence), but one step forward from the traditional reactive AI.

The key of an AI agent revolves around the following components:

Core components of an AI agent:

• Perceive: Gathers input (text, images, sounds, etc.) and outputs from intermediate steps.
• Reason: Makes decisions using logic, rules, or machine learning (often an LLM these days).
• Action: Performs actions (like creating files/folders, or even interacting with the software).

Difference between an AI agent and an AI assistant

An AI agent is one step further than an AI assistant. Most of the publicly available AI tools on the market nowadays usually fall into the category of AI assistants. As you can tell from the core components, the key difference lies in the “action” step:

• An AI agent is capable of completing tasks on your behalf, often by interacting with external tools or systems.
• An AI assistant, on the other hand, typically offers suggestions, guidance, or information — but you are the one who takes action.