3 ms·

It's been blurry for a long time, FWIW. I have books on "Agents" dating back to the late 90's or early 2000's in which the "Intro" chapter usually has a section

It's been blurry for a long time, FWIW. I have books on "Agents" dating back to the late 90's or early 2000's in which the "Intro" chapter usually has a section that tries to define what an "agent" is, and laments that there is no universally accepted definition. To illustrate: here's a paper from 1996 that tries to lay out a taxonomy of the different kinds of agents and provide some definitions: https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/document?repid=rep1&type=pdf&doi=2a6b5b22556f208d50a119be1f879792e9bab47b https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/document?repid=rep1&type=pdf&d... And another from the same time-frame, which makes a similar effort: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Stan-Franklin/publication/221457111_Is_it_an_Agent_or_Just_a_Program_A_Taxonomy_for_Autonomous_Agents/links/0f317530ba440e7979000000/Is-it-an-Agent-or-Just-a-Program-A-Taxonomy-for-Autonomous-Agents.pdf?_tp=eyJjb250ZXh0Ijp7ImZpcnN0UGFnZSI6InB1YmxpY2F0aW9uIiwicGFnZSI6InB1YmxpY2F0aW9uIn19 https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Stan-Franklin/publicati...

ethbr1 2y ago
The technical difference between agents then and agents now are the fuzzy parameter mapping capabilities of LLMs, if used. Scaling agent capability requires agents that are able to auto-map various tools. If every different tool is a new, custom integration, that must be written by a person, then we end up where we are today -- specialized agents where there exists enough demand and stability to write and maintain those integrations, but no general purpose agents. Ultimately, parameter mapping in a sane, consistent, globally-applicable way is the key that unlocks an agentic future, or a failure that leads to its demise.