For technology adopters looking for the next big thing, “agentic AI” is the future. At least, that’s what the marketing pitches and tech industry T-shirts say.
What makes an artificial intelligence product “agentic” depends on who’s selling it. But the promise is usually that it’s a step beyond today’s generative AI chatbots.
Chatbots, however useful, are all talk and no action. They can answer questions, retrieve and summarize information, write papers and generate images, music, video and lines of code. AI agents, by contrast, are supposed to be able to take actions autonomously on a person’s behalf.
Photo: AP 照片：美聯社
If you’re confused, you’re not alone. Google searches for “agentic” skyrocketed from near obscurity a year ago to a peak this fall. Merriam-Webster hasn’t added it to the dictionary but lists “agentic” as a slang or trending term defined as: “Able to accomplish results with autonomy, used especially in reference to artificial intelligence.”
How to know if it’s an AI agent or just a fancy chatbot
AI chatbots — such as the original ChatGPT that debuted three years ago this month — rely on systems called large language models (LLMs) that predict the next word in a sentence based on the huge trove of human writings they’ve been trained on. They can sound remarkably human, especially when given a voice, but are effectively performing a kind of word completion.
Photo: ChatGPT 照片：ChatGPT
That’s different from what AI developers — including ChatGPT’s maker, OpenAI, and tech giants like Amazon, Google, IBM, Microsoft and Salesforce — have in mind for AI agents.
“A generative AI-based chatbot will say, ‘Here are the great ideas’ … and then be done,” said Swami Sivasubramanian, vice president of Agentic AI at Amazon Web Services, in an interview last week. “It’s useful, but what makes things agentic is that it goes beyond what a chatbot does.”
At its most basic level, an AI agent works like a traditional, human-crafted computer program that executes a job, like launching an application. Combined with an AI large language model, however, it can search for knowledge that enables it to complete tasks without explicit, step-by-step instructions. That means, instead of just helping you draft the language of an email, it can theoretically handle the whole process — receiving a message from your coworker, figuring out what you might want to say, and firing off the response on its own.
Photo: Reuters 照片：路透社
For most consumers, the first encounters with AI agents could be in realms like online shopping. Set a budget and some preferences and AI agents can buy things or arrange travel bookings using your credit card. In the longer run, the hope is that they can do more complex tasks with access to your computer and a set of guidelines to follow.
‘Agentic’ is a trendy buzzword based
on an older idea
Milind Tambe has been researching AI agents that work together for three decades, since the first International Conference on Multi-Agent Systems gathered in San Francisco in 1995. Tambe said he’s been “amused” by the sudden popularity of “agentic” as an adjective. Previously, the word describing something that has agency was mostly found in other academic fields, such as psychology or chemistry.
But computer scientists have been debating what an agent is for as long as Tambe has been studying them.
The prominent AI researcher Andrew Ng, co-founder of online learning company Coursera, helped advocate for popularizing the adjective “agentic” more than a year ago to encompass a broader spectrum of AI tasks.
(AP)
對尋求科技下一個大突破的人來說，「代理型人工智慧」（agentic AI）被認為是未來。至少，行銷宣傳與科技業T恤上是這麼說的。
究竟什麼樣的人工智慧產品算是「代理型」，取決於銷售者的說法；但它通常被宣稱是比現今的生成式AI聊天機器人要更進一步。
聊天機器人雖然實用，但「只能說不能做」——它能回答問題、搜尋、摘要資訊、撰寫文章，以及生成圖片、音樂、影片與程式碼。相較之下，AI代理人則被認為可以自主代替人做出行動。
若你感到困惑，你不是唯一這樣覺得的人。「agentic」一詞的Google搜尋量在一年內從默默無聞飆升到今年秋天的高峰。美國韋氏字典雖尚未正式收錄該詞，但已將其列為俚語或流行用語，定義為：「能以自主方式完成結果，主要指的是人工智慧」。
它是AI代理人，或只是更花俏的聊天機器人？
AI聊天機器人——例如三年前本月問世的原始版ChatGPT——依賴稱為大型語言模型（LLM）的系統，透過訓練於海量人類文字資料來預測句子裡下一個字。AI聊天機器人可能聽起來很像人類，尤其在配上語音後，但本質上仍是在執行某種「文字自動完成」。
這與AI開發者（包括 ChatGPT 的開發商OpenAI，以及Amazon、Google、IBM、Microsoft、Salesforce等科技巨頭）對「AI代理人」的構想非常不同。
「生成式AI的聊天機器人會說：『這些是很棒的點子』……然後就結束了」，亞馬遜網路服務（AWS）代理式AI副總裁斯瓦米．西瓦蘇布拉馬尼安上週受訪時說道。「它很有用，但代理式AI的關鍵是要更進一步，超越聊天機器人的功能」。
最基本來說，AI代理人像是傳統由人類撰寫的電腦程式，能執行一項任務，例如啟動應用程式。但它結合大型語言模型後，就能搜尋所需知識，在沒有明確的逐步指示下完成任務。這代表，AI不僅能協助你起草郵件內容，理論上它能處理整個流程——接收同事的訊息、推測你想寫什麼，甚至自動寄出回覆。
對一般消費者而言，跟AI代理人的首次接觸可能會出現在網購等領域。只要設定預算與偏好，AI代理人就能用你的信用卡自動購物或安排旅遊。長遠來看，業界希望AI代理人能在得到電腦存取權限與一套指引後，執行更複雜的任務。
「Agentic」是基於舊概念而翻紅的新潮流行語
米林德．丹貝已研究協作式AI代理人長達30年，從1995年第一屆多重代理人系統國際會議在舊金山舉行開始便投入該領域。丹貝說他對「agentic」一字被用做形容詞而突然走紅「感到很有趣」，因為這個字過去大多是在心理學或化學等其他學科中出現，描述事物有作用、有仲介。
但電腦科學家一直以來都在討論代理人（agent）的用途，從丹貝投入研究起就是如此。
知名AI研究者、教育科技公司Coursera共同創辦人吳恩達（Andrew Ng）在一年多前便開始推動普及「agentic」這個形容詞，以涵蓋更廣泛的AI任務範疇。
（台北時報林俐凱編譯）
Have you ever argued with your parents about politics, news or social issues? Maybe you think their opinions are outdated, while they claim you have been brainwashed by the Internet. The truth is, neither of you is wrong. You’re simply living in different “filter bubbles,” seeing entirely different versions of reality. A filter bubble forms when Web sites use algorithms to predict what content you want. Based on the videos you watch on YouTube, the TikToks you linger on or the articles you click, the system feeds you more of the same. Before you know it, you’re stuck in
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