The agentic era of artificial intelligence has arrived. Billed as “the next big thing in AI research,” AI agents are capable of operating independently and without continuous, direct oversight, while collaborating with users to automate monotonous tasks. In this guide, you’ll find everything you need to know about how AI agents are designed, what they can do, what they’re capable of, and whether they can be trusted to act on your behalf.What is an agentic AI?Agentic AI is a type of generative AI model that can act autonomously, make decisions, and take actions towards complex goals without direct human intervention. These systems are able to interpret changing conditions in real-time and react accordingly, rather than rotely following predefined rules or instructions. Based on the same large language models that drive popular chatbots like ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini, agentic AIs differ in that they use LLMs to take action on a user’s behalf rather than generate content.

AutoGPT and BabyAGI are two of the earliest examples of AI agents, as they were able to solve reasonably complex queries with minimal oversight. AI agents are considered to be an early step towards achieving artificial general intelligence (AGI). In a recent blog post, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman argued that, “We are now confident we know how to build AGI as we have traditionally understood it,” and predicted, “in 2025, we may see the first AI agents ‘join the workforce’ and materially change the output of companies.”