What Is an AI Agent?
An AI agent is a system that uses a language model to reason about a goal and take actions — calling tools, querying data, and completing multi-step tasks — not just answering questions.
An AI agent is a system that uses a large language model to reason about a goal and then take actions — calling tools, querying data, or invoking APIs — across multiple steps to complete a task, rather than just returning a single answer.
Why it matters
A chatbot answers; an agent does work. Agents can look things up, fill in records, trigger workflows, and decide the next step — automating tasks that combine rules with judgment. They’re evaluated on task completion, not conversation quality.
What makes them safe
Production agents need guardrails: scoped permissions, human approval for high-stakes actions, input/output validation, audit logging, and continuous evaluation. Designing these in is central to AI agent development.
Related
See AI agent development and generative AI.
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