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What, exactly, is an 'AI Agent'? Here's a litmus test

What makes an AI system an agent? Stephen O'Brien's litmus test cuts through the confusion to define what separates agents from assistants.

Agency is a longstanding concept in common law, where principals give authority to agents to act on their behalf. In enterprise software systems, we have a clear definition of identity: the actor who is named in the audit log, for any action taken. By this definition, many great pieces of AI software are not agents, including our Workbench product, which is designed to operate within human control.

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