This YouTube explainer (Matt Wolfe, uploaded May 6, 2024) defines "AI agents" as autonomous systems that, given a task prompt, continue working and iterating—potentially using external tools and APIs—until they reach the user’s goal. The speaker contrasts agents with manual, in-chat use of ChatGPT, arguing that agents offer far greater productivity leverage (he cites an illustrative "100x" advantage).
I don't think you sitting in front of ChatGPT every day is going to do it. That is, again, giving you 50% leverage on your time. We're really looking for 100x, right? And I think agents represent 100x. When you say an agent, you're talking about you go into, like a chat window, like a chat GPT. You give it a task that you want it to complete, but instead of just giving you a single response back, it will keep on working on that task and iterating. And iterating and possibly even using external tools and APIs until it reaches the end goal that you initially prompted it with. That's exactly right.
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