What are AI Agents?

Chatbot vs. Agent

• Chatbot: You ask, "What is the weather?quot; It says, "I don't know, I'm just a computer program." (Or it hallucinates a guess).
• Agent: You ask, "What is the weather?quot; It opens a weather app, checks the forecast, and tells you, "It's 72°F and sunny."

The key difference is Action.

A chatbot just talks. An Agent does things.

How Agents Work

Agents have three main superpowers:

1.  **Brain (LLM)**: It understands what you want.
2.  **Tools**: It has "hands" to interact with the world.
    - _Examples_: A calculator, a Google Search bar, an email sender, a calendar.
3.  **Planning**: It can break a big goal into small steps.
    - _Goal_: "Plan my vacation."
    - _Step 1_: Search for flights.
    - _Step 2_: Check hotel availability.
    - _Step 3_: Send me a summary email.

Why Does This Matter?

Agents turn AI from a fun toy into a useful worker.
Instead of just writing an email for you, an Agent can send it.
Instead of just writing code, an Agent can run it and fix errors.

Conclusion

We are moving from the era of "Chatting with AI" to "Working with AI." Agents are the digital assistants that will actually help us get stuff done.