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If films and TV have taught us anything, it’s that the future ought to be full of autonomous, sentient robots. C-3PO, Jarvis, Bender, and Rosie the Robot from “The Jetsons” didn’t just sit around waiting to be given their next prompt. They took action. We’re not yet living in a world full of human-like robots or sentient operating systems like Samantha in “Her.” However, technology is inching us closer to that dream (or nightmare) every day.
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Agentic AI is the next big development in artificial intelligence. Unlike chatbots or large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT, which require human commands, it employs AI agents to operate independently, make decisions, adapt, learn, and act autonomously. When you give it an objective, the AI agent uses a LLM to understand what it needs to do. It creates a task list, working out what it needs to do and the order it needs to do it in then, it starts looking for information via the internet or other systems in its network. It learns as it goes, so it can improve its strategy as it progresses.
It will work through its tasks as many times as it needs to until it achieves the objective it has been given. Imagine an AI personal assistant who could plan a two-week European vacation within a $5,000 budget by researching flights, accommodations, and itineraries, refining options based on your preferences and feedback. It would use internet searches and external systems to optimize the plan, iterating until the trip is fully booked and tailored to your needs.
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How is Agentic AI currently being used?
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Self-driving cars are one of the most visible examples of Agentic AI in action. Waymo’s autonomous driving systems use Agentic principles to navigate complex environments, make real-time decisions, and adapt to changing traffic conditions without human input. This level of automation is limited to users in Phoenix, San Francisco, or Los Angeles. However, Agentic AI is also being employed in semi-autonomous cars with collision avoidance and lane-keeping features.
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Agentic AI isn’t just limited to cars, though. It’s already being used in business, healthcare, science, and software development. The business software company Salesforce released a new product, Agentforce, in 2024, an Agentic AI platform that allows companies to create customized AI agents to run parts of their business like customer support or sales processes. In the financial industry, some companies are using Agentic AI to manage banking tasks. For example, Bud Financial uses AI agents to automatically move customers’ money to take advantage of better interest rates and to avoid unnecessary overdrafts. Hippocratic AI provides Agentic AI apps to healthcare professionals. There are around 200 different agents, each with its own human avatar and name, covering areas ranging from lifestyle change counseling to dialysis onboarding.
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Agentic AI software developers, such as Devin, can autonomously complete coding requirements step-by-step, including planning, coding, debugging, and deployment. In his keynote speech at last year’s CES (formerly known as the Consumer Electronic Show), NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang
“Agentic AI” is going to be “the next giant AI service” in software development and “everybody is going to have a software assistant helping them code.”
what’s next and can it change the way the world works?
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The success of these agents will depend on their ability to achieve their goals and deal with unexpected or incorrect outcomes. It will also require that people be willing to give sensitive data. Would you feel comfortable giving your financial or medical information to an AI agent? The advancements in Agentic AI are likely to present new legal challenges. Regulators will also need to address ethical concerns about accountability.
Agentic AI may be able to offset its environmental impact by monitoring ecosystems, and finding solutions that combat climate change. We don’t yet know the full extent of these effects and how they will affect ethical and philosophical issues. Is an AI accountable? If not, then who is ultimately accountable for its actions? And can you have agency without accountability if it’s not accountable? We have not yet found a way to balance the benefits of technology with ethical and social concerns.
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