Founder, vishalmehtacmt.com
Most people think of artificial intelligence (AI) as a very smart encyclopaedia. You ask it a question, and it gives you an answer. If you need a recipe, it writes one. If you need a summary of a chapter, it creates one. But answering questions is only the first step. The next step is a computer that can actually do the work for you.
This is called agentic AI.
To understand the difference, imagine that you are planning to invite your friends over to watch a cricket match. If you use regular AI, you might ask, “What snacks should I get for a cricket match?” The AI will quickly provide a list: samosas, chips, cold drinks and biscuits. That is helpful, but the AI stops there. You still have to open your phone, find a delivery app and order the food yourself.
Now imagine using agentic AI. You do not ask it for a list. Instead, you give it a goal: “Order snacks and cold drinks for a cricket match party for four people, and keep the total under ₹500.”
The agentic AI takes action. First, it opens a grocery delivery app such as Blinkit or Swiggy Instamart. It searches for chips, cold drinks and sweets, and adds them to the cart. It notices that the bill comes to ₹650, which exceeds your budget. Instead of giving up, it looks for a solution. It searches for a discount coupon or checks another delivery app to compare prices. It finds a combo offer on the second app for ₹450 and, after receiving your approval, places the order for delivery to your home.
Regular AI provides information. Agentic AI takes action, solves problems and completes tasks.
How AI Agents Use Digital Tools
Regular AI is like a brain without a body. It has access to a great deal of information, but it is confined to a chat box. Agentic AI is different because it is given “hands.” These hands are digital tools. With the necessary permissions, an AI agent can use a web browser, send an email, perform calculations or interact with a shopping app.
When you give an AI agent a goal, it works in a planning and task automation loop. It follows four simple steps:
- Plan: It determines what needs to be done.
- Act: It uses its digital tools to complete the first step.
- Observe: It reviews the result and checks whether the action worked.
- Adjust: If it encounters a problem or makes a mistake, it develops a new plan and tries again.
This loop is what makes agentic AI so powerful. It does not need a human to guide it through every step. If it encounters a roadblock, it attempts to find another way forward—while remaining within the permissions and rules set by the user.
Human Oversight in Agentic AI
You might wonder what humans will do if computers can complete entire tasks independently. The answer is that our roles will change. Instead of being workers who click every button, we will increasingly become managers who define goals, set boundaries and review results.
If you use agentic AI, your job is to give it a clear goal, establish the rules and check its final work. For example, if you tell an AI to “do my maths homework,” it might search for answers online without helping you understand the subject. But if you tell it, “Read these five maths problems, use a calculator to solve them and explain each step to me,” it can provide a far more useful response.
The future of computing is not just about machines that can talk to us. It is about digital partners that can work alongside us. We will no longer ask computers only for advice; we will give them goals and watch them get to work.
