What Are AI Agents? From Chatbots to Assistants That Act
AI agents can plan steps, use tools and complete tasks. Learn how they work, where they help, and how to keep them safe and supervised.
- Advanced
- 15 min
- Updated
What you will learn
- Explain the difference between a chatbot and an agent
- Describe the plan–act–observe loop
- Design safe limits and human approval for agents
A chatbot answers your question. An AI agent goes further: it can break a goal into steps, use tools (search, spreadsheets, email, code), check the results, and continue until the task is done.
The agent loop
- Plan: decide the next step towards the goal.
- Act: use a tool — search the web, read a file, run a calculation.
- Observe: look at the result.
- Repeat until the goal is met, or ask a human for help.
Where agents help
- Researching a topic across many sources and writing a report
- Processing a folder of documents and filling a spreadsheet
- Monitoring enquiries and preparing draft replies for approval
- Writing, testing and fixing code
Keeping agents safe
- Least access: give the agent only the tools and data it truly needs.
- Human approval before sending messages, spending money or deleting anything.
- Logs: record what the agent did so you can review it.
- Untrusted input: web pages and emails can contain hidden instructions — never let them override your rules.
Agents are one of the fastest-moving areas of AI. Learn the principles here, and you’ll be ready to use new agent tools safely as they appear.