AI Agent
An AI agent is a system that takes a goal, breaks it into steps, and executes those steps autonomously—calling tools, reading results, adjusting course—without a human approving each action. Where a chatbot waits for your next prompt, an agent decides what to do next on its own. The concept borrows from reinforcement learning and robotics, but the current wave runs on large language models that can reason about which tool to use when. Agents are powerful when the task has clear success criteria and bounded risk. They are dangerous when the goal is vague, the environment is unfamiliar, or the cost of a wrong action is high. Most production agent systems today still need tight guardrails and human checkpoints—full autonomy remains more demo than reality.
Related terms:
Fuzzy Interface
A fuzzy interface is AI’s adaptive translation layer between rigid organizational systems and human intent, interpreting context and adapting to various...
RLHF
Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF) trains a reward model on human preference comparisons and uses reinforcement learning to align language...
Agentic AI
Agentic AI refers to systems that autonomously pursue goals—planning actions, employing tools, and adapting based on feedback—without waiting for human...