Agent
An AI agent is like a digital assistant that doesn't just answer a question, but actually goes out and does the work for you by using different apps or tools in a sequence until the job is finished.
An AI agent is a system designed to achieve a specific objective by autonomously executing a series of steps, which includes interacting with external tools or APIs, evaluating the outcomes, and adjusting its strategy accordingly.
An AI system that pursues a goal over multiple steps by selecting actions, calling tools/APIs, observing results, and adapting — rather than producing a single one-shot response.
evolution
- 1995 · historySoftbots
Etzioni and Weld introduced software robots capable of performing tasks on the internet by interacting with user interfaces.
- 2017 · historyAutoML and Task-Oriented Agents
Research into reinforcement learning agents began focusing on multi-step decision-making processes in complex environments.
- 2023-03 · historyAutoGPT and BabyAGI
The release of open-source projects demonstrated the ability of LLMs to autonomously chain prompts and use tools to complete multi-step objectives.
- 2024-09 · historyOpenAI o1 Series
The introduction of reasoning models capable of 'chain-of-thought' processing to plan and execute complex multi-step tasks before providing an answer.
seen in events