AI Agents, also known as Generative AI, are the AI we are familiar with from providers such as OpenAI (ChatGPT), Google (Gemini), and Microsoft (Copilot).
Agentic AI, to the best of my knowledge, Agentic AI is not yet available for mass deployment, but it does represent the next step in AI development and deployment.
The Difference Between Agentic AI & AI Agents
Perhaps the best way to describe the difference between these two AI protocols is that Agentic AI is proactive, while AI Agents are largely reactive.
Agentic AI is largely autonomous, making decisions, planning actions, and executing tasks with little to no human interaction. It learns from its environment and adapts to changes while focusing on specific goals.
AI Agents provide information on request, can assist with simple tasks, and often require retraining to adapt to changes in their environment. In short, this is the AI most of us are already familiar with.
Unlike traditional AI systems that primarily respond to user input, Agentic AI focuses on autonomous decision-making and goal-driven actions. Agentic AI is defined by behavior (how it acts), whereas Generative AI is defined by the breadth of its knowledge.
BOTTOM LINE:
I doubt Agentic AI will be applied across operating systems any time soon, and it’s largely a tool for organizations to make decisions and automate workflow. That said, I expect that in the not-too-distant future, Windows home users will be subjected to Agentic AI in certain areas, such as the browser, for example.
Would you trust Agentic AI to operate autonomously within your system?
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I didn’t read the post because I’m not interested in AI.
But I am interested in the damage it’s data centers are causing across the world.
If we ever thought we were overusing water and electricity before, it is not a scrap on what will soon be consumed by these humungous data centers
And they are being situated in really strange places. Like here in Australia where drought is just a year away from any location, they are being placed in areas with low water resilience.
So the rural folk who are usually so diligent about water security will loose their rights in favour of these massive factories.
WHY?
Limitations mean nothing to these companies as long as they can secure the resources they need. When you are spending billions, what is a few million to grease the approval of your product. Once the guarantees are in place, it is the local governments problem to deal with shortages.
I live in a part of Canada that has limited electrical capacity and water supply, yet a company is trying to push to build a massive AI plant.
Microsoft and many other companies will go to any lengths to protect what they perceived as theirs.
Without oversight, these companies will manipulate the masses to maximize their profits.
I find among my acquaintances, they blindly go where these companies drag them. Only a few individuals are aware or care what these huge companies are doing.
Jim, I’m no AI expert either, but I was pretty sure that the description you gave for AI agents is actually a description of a chatbot. To find out for sure, I asked Gemini what an AI agent is Here’s part of what it said.
“At its core, an AI agent is an artificial intelligence system that doesn’t just answer questions—it takes autonomous action to achieve a specific goal.
If a standard AI chatbot is like an incredibly smart encyclopedia you can talk to, an AI agent is like a digital intern. You give it an objective, and it figures out the steps required, uses tools to execute those steps, and adapts if it runs into roadblocks.”
Then I asked it if agentic AI is the same as AI agents. Herte’s the first part of its lengthy answer:
“They refer to the exact same technological shift, but there is a slight conceptual and grammatical difference between the two terms.
Think of AI agents as the noun (the entity itself) and agentic AI as the adjective or broader concept (the capability it possesses).
The Breakdown
An AI Agent (The Entity): This is the specific software program, bot, or system that does the work. When you deploy a program to independently research a company, summarize the findings, and email you the results, you are using an AI agent.
Agentic AI (The Capability): This describes the broader paradigm, or the property of having agency. When an AI model is capable of planning, using tools, and making decisions without constant human hand-holding, it is described as being agentic.”
I always research topics thoroughly and this is what I believe; Generative AI, AI Agent, and Chatbot are all used interchangeably to describe the same protocol.
This is what I get when I put the question to AI:
Agentic AI refers to systems that can autonomously make decisions and coordinate actions across multiple tools to achieve broader goals, while an AI agent typically performs specific, well-defined tasks within set boundaries.”
Agentic AI:
Can coordinate multiple tools and systems.
Capable of multi-step workflows.
Proactively identifies needs and opportunities.
AI Agent:
Focuses on single tasks, such as responding to queries or executing commands.
Requires explicit prompts to take action.
Typically designed for specific functions, like chatbots or data retrieval
So, there is some confusion and, I guess, it depends on which AI you ask. What I have written here is the result of extensive research across multiple sources, from which AI draws its conclusions.