'No One Knows What the Hell an AI Agent Is'

Major technology companies are heavily promoting AI agents as transformative tools for work, but industry insiders say no one can agree on what these systems actually are, according to TechCrunch. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said agents will 'join the workforce' this year, while Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella predicted they will replace certain knowledge work. Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff declared his company's goal to become 'the number one provider of digital labor in the world.'

The definition problem has worsened recently. OpenAI published a blog post defining agents as 'automated systems that can independently accomplish tasks,' but its developer documentation described them as 'LLMs equipped with instructions and tools.' Microsoft distinguishes between agents and AI assistants, while Salesforce lists six different categories of agents.
'I think that our industry overuses the term 'agent' to the point where it is almost nonsensical,' Ryan Salva, senior director of product at Google, told TechCrunch. Andrew Ng, founder of DeepLearning.ai, blamed marketing: 'The concepts of AI 'agents' and 'agentic' workflows used to have a technical meaning, but about a year ago, marketers and a few big companies got a hold of them.' Analysts say this ambiguity threatens to create misaligned expectations as companies build product lineups around agents.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.