What, exactly, is an 'AI Agent'? Here's a litmus test
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Re: What, exactly, is an 'AI Agent'? Here's a litmus test
#2"Does the AI system perform actions under its own identity?"
I don't agree with this definition.
I view an agent has having the ability to affect the world, and then sense how it affected the world and then choose to make additional actions. Thus there is an act, sense, re-act feedback loop going on that does not require a human to mediate this. This to me is an agent.
"But why isn't, say, ChatGPT an agent?"
ChatGPT (the web app where you send it chats and it responses) by default doesn't act on the world and sense the changes it is making. Although once you take the GPT o4 model and hook it up with tool calling that affects the world in a feedback loop is definitely an agent.
I believe this definition generally aligns with most people's definitions as well.
I wrote an essay about building an agentic coder and it really is when you establish the tool-calling feedback loop that things move from an assistant to an agent: https://benhouston3d.com/blog/building-an-agentic-code-from-...
Re: What, exactly, is an 'AI Agent'? Here's a litmus test
#3"Does the AI system perform actions under its own identity?" I don't agree with this definition. I view an agent has having the ability to affect the world, and then sense how it affected the world and then choose to make additional actions. Thus there is an act, sense, re-act feedback loop going on that does not require a human to mediate this. This to me is an agent. "But why isn't, say, ChatGPT an agent?" ChatGPT…
I agree with you. People really overcomplicate this.
From wiktionary:
""" Agent (plural agents)
- One who exerts power, or has the power to act.
- One who acts for, or in the place of, another (the principal), by that person's authority; someone entrusted to act on behalf of or in behalf of another, such as to transact business for them.
- [various more specific definitions for real estate, biology, etc]
From Latin agēns, present active participle of agere (“to drive, lead, conduct, manage, perform, do”). """
An agent is simply someone or something that does something, usually for someone else. An AI agent is thus an AI that does something, usually for someone else. An AI assistant could be an AI agent, or it could be a glorified chatbot who merely offers you spoken or written word, possibly after reacting to real-world information (but not itself modifying it)
Re: What, exactly, is an 'AI Agent'? Here's a litmus test
#4"Does the AI system perform actions under its own identity?" I don't agree with this definition. I view an agent has having the ability to affect the world, and then sense how it affected the world and then choose to make additional actions. Thus there is an act, sense, re-act feedback loop going on that does not require a human to mediate this. This to me is an agent. "But why isn't, say, ChatGPT an agent?" ChatGPT…
I agree with you. People really overcomplicate this. From wiktionary: """ Agent (plural agents) - One who exerts power, or has the power to act. - One who acts for, or in the place of, another (the principal), by that person's authority; someone entrusted to act on behalf of or in behalf of another, such as to transact business for them. - [various more specific definitions for real estate, biology, etc] From Latin a…
The problem with just using that definition is that drawing the line of what it means to have "the power to act" or to "act for, or in the place of, another" is subjective.
Most would agree that a system or automation that could receive the instruction "do my entire job for me" and proceed to physically embody a bio-clone of me, walk to my office, impersonate me 40hrs a week, and keep my pay check coming in while I play MMOs would satisfy the definition.
Most would also agree that a computer terminal receiving the command "git push origin main" doesn't qualify as an AI "agent". But in a very loose sense it does do the thing your definition says. It does some git work for me on behalf of me. So we'd argue about what exactly an AI is. Are we just using it as a stand-in for ML model enabled software agents now? Or for LLM+multi-modal transformer enabled models/systems?
Now pick 1000 points in between those two ends of the spectrum and you're gonna find that there is not a single cut-off where some see the transition from "Is an AI Agent" to "Is not an AI agent".
Is an LLM that can take my request to find me a movie showing for the new Transformer movie next Thursday night, buy the ticket, and add it to my calendar an AI agent? Or is that just voice-activated/human-language as input Zapier/IFTT? Is that just a regular ChatGPT prompt with an integration to my Fandango account and GCal?
Or would it need to monitor movie releases and as new movies come out, ask me pro-actively if I want it to go ahead and find time in my GCal and buy a ticket pro-actively?
Or does it need to be a software agent that is run by a movie studio and proactively posts content online to try to spread marketing for that movie ahead of its release?
Does it need to be a long-running software process instantiated (birthed) to a docker pod, given a single goal ("make the Transformers movie more profitable, focusing on marketing"), and then doing all the rest of the planning, execution, etc. itself?
Defining that cut-off is the hard part, or what definition gives us a useful way to determine that cut-off. I'd argue your dictionary definition doesn't really do it.
Re: What, exactly, is an 'AI Agent'? Here's a litmus test
#5"AI Agent", as of April 2025, is a largely meaningless term that serves as a descriptive abstraction for people who aren't so familiar with coding. Debating its definition is pointless.
AI Agent is whatever you want it to be if it helps you design or explain something.
Re: What, exactly, is an 'AI Agent'? Here's a litmus test
#6"Does the AI system perform actions under its own identity?" I don't agree with this definition. I view an agent has having the ability to affect the world, and then sense how it affected the world and then choose to make additional actions. Thus there is an act, sense, re-act feedback loop going on that does not require a human to mediate this. This to me is an agent. "But why isn't, say, ChatGPT an agent?" ChatGPT…
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Re: What, exactly, is an 'AI Agent'? Here's a litmus test
#7Anthropic has a definition:
Workflows are systems where LLMs and tools are orchestrated through predefined code paths.
Agents, on the other hand, are systems where LLMs dynamically direct their own processes and tool usage, maintaining control over how they accomplish tasks
While I know it's a marketing term, I think a good distinction is that agents have a loop in the execution graph, and can choose whether to loop or keep going. Workflows are chained LLM calls where the LLM has no "choice".
Re: What, exactly, is an 'AI Agent'? Here's a litmus test
#8"AI Agent", as of April 2025, is a largely meaningless term that serves as a descriptive abstraction for people who aren't so familiar with coding. Debating its definition is pointless. AI Agent is whatever you want it to be if it helps you design or explain something.
I think there's a contradiction in claiming a term is meaningless and discussing its definition is pointless, and saying it can help explain things.
Re: What, exactly, is an 'AI Agent'? Here's a litmus test
#9"Does the AI system perform actions under its own identity?" I don't agree with this definition. I view an agent has having the ability to affect the world, and then sense how it affected the world and then choose to make additional actions. Thus there is an act, sense, re-act feedback loop going on that does not require a human to mediate this. This to me is an agent. "But why isn't, say, ChatGPT an agent?" ChatGPT…
Your right, the “own identity” part is the problem.
You can act on your own agency or you act as an agent for someone else.
AI today is only the second. We tell it what we want, it acts by our impetus, but what it does or how it does it, is up to it.
Re: What, exactly, is an 'AI Agent'? Here's a litmus test
#10An AI agent has agency-- it can choose when to act.