A Concrete Definition of an AI Agent

Summary: An AI agent pursues a goal by iteratively taking actions, evaluating progress, and deciding next steps. Useful agents must be reliable, adaptive, and accurate.

The word "agent" is being applied to everything. There are agents in your phone, your company Slack, your Notion, and your banking app . There are agents sending hate mail and deleting email inboxes . "Agent" has become a diffuse, ambiguous term that means everything and nothing.

This is a problem. Without a clear definition, practitioners can't evaluate what they're working with or decide whether to trust it. Marketing, sales, engineering, product, and leadership each have a separate definition of what an "AI Agent" is supposed to be. Some of these definitions are grounded in real-world use cases, but most of them float amidst hype and hope. Instead, we at NN/G offer a concrete definition that helps UX professionals design better experiences for their users.

What Is an AI Agent?

An AI agent is a system that pursues a goal by iteratively taking actions, evaluating progress, and deciding its own next steps.