AI agent

An AI agent differs from a chat assistant in that it can use tools: search a database, send an email, fill in a form, call other systems. Given a task, it decides for itself which steps to take and assesses the intermediate result.

The more autonomy, the more risk. A mistake in the first step carries into the next ones, and an action already taken, such as an email sent or a record changed, cannot always be undone.

Agents are therefore usually given limited permissions, and a person approves the actions that cannot be reversed. If a task’s steps are always the same, it is more reliable and cheaper to automate it with ordinary rules and no AI.