What is an AI Agent?

Introduction to AI Agents

Adel Nehme

VP of AI Curriculum, DataCamp

Course Learning Objectives

 

  • Understand the core components that make up an AI agent
  • Distinguish agents from other AI systems you might already know or use
  • Use off-the-shelf agentic tools or even building your own
Introduction to AI Agents

Jeeves: Our Travel AI Agent

Tokyo

1 Image generated with GPT-4o
Introduction to AI Agents

Jeeves: Our Travel AI Agent

jeeves

Jeeves, I'm travelling to Tokyo on June 26 and staying there until July 12. Help organize my trip.

1 Image generated with GPT-4o
Introduction to AI Agents

Reasoning and Planning

reasoning_planning

  1. Access your itinerary and calendar
  2. Identify where you'll need to stay based on your meeting schedule
  3. Identify relevant flights and hotels
  4. Communicate the plan back to you
  5. And finally, organize your travels
1 Image generated with GPT-4o
Introduction to AI Agents

Taking Action

jeeves_travel

  1. Your calendar and email to understand your itinerary and meetings
  2. Documentation on your company travel policy to ensure compliance
  3. Expedia and Booking.com to determine the best flights and hotels
  4. Communicates plan, and books travel arrangements
1 Image generated with GPT-4o
Introduction to AI Agents

AI Agents: Reasoning, Planning, and Acting

An AI model capable of reasoning, planning, and acting on a set of actions by interacting with its environment.

1 The Hugging Face Agents Course: https://github.com/huggingface/agents-course
Introduction to AI Agents

AI Agents: Reasoning, Planning, and Acting

An AI model capable of reasoning, planning, and acting on a set of actions by interacting with its environment.

brain_body

1 The Hugging Face Agents Course: https://github.com/huggingface/agents-course
Introduction to AI Agents

AI Agents: A Formal Definition

 

 

An agent is a system that leverages an AI model to interact with its environment to achieve a user-defined objective. It combines reasoning, planning, and the execution of actions (often via external tools) to fulfill tasks.

1 The Hugging Face Agents Course: https://github.com/huggingface/agents-course
Introduction to AI Agents

The Spectrum of "Agency"

Level Agency Description Examples
0 No agency Systems that can only respond based on trained knowledge or perform discrete, pre-defined tasks Chatbots with trained knowledge (e.g. GPT-4o), workflow automation systems
1 Basic routing AI models that can route scenarios in workflows A customer support workflow where an AI model routes a ticket based on its content
2 Tool-using agents Systems that can utilize external tools A travel AI agent that can book flights (e.g. Jeeves)
3 Autonomous agents Systems that can perform multiple steps autonomously Deep research tools that can perform multi-step reasoning and tool calling
4 Multi agent systems Systems that can delegate workflows to multiple agents Coding assistants that can ideate, generate, and push code to an existing codebase
Introduction to AI Agents

Let's Practice!

Introduction to AI Agents

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