Scientific Definition
AI system that takes actions to achieve goals, often across tools.
Plain-English Definition
AI system that takes actions to achieve goals, often across tools.
Feynman Explanation
Chat is reactive. Agents are autonomous. The risk profile is different.
Core Principle
AI system that takes actions to achieve goals, often across tools.
Mechanisms
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Inputs (Triggers)
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Outputs (Behaviors)
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Behavioral Signature
Chat is reactive. Agents are autonomous. The risk profile is different.
Examples
- Customer support agents, coding agents, research agents.
- Major emerging category.
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Famous Experiments
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Design Principles
- Sandbox first. Define guardrails. Tight observability.
Measurement Approaches
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Evidence
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The Perverse Incentive Lens™
How this behavior is exploited — and how to redesign around it.
- Sandbox first. Define guardrails. Tight observability.
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Interactive Mini Network
Click any neighbor to re-center the graph and follow the threads of connection.
Knowledge Graph Neighbors
Auto-linked to the rest of the Human Behavior Taxonomy by family, domain, dimension, and shared keywords.
Designing processes from scratch around AI capability.
The relationship between inputs and outputs changes.
How much input the model can process at once.
Underlying data distribution changes over time.
Vector representation of content for similarity and search.
Evaluation suites that no longer reflect real-world conditions.
Systematic testing of model quality, safety, and capability.
Models learning from examples in the prompt.
How much delay the user experience tolerates.
Train a smaller model to imitate a larger one.
Performance degradation as real-world data shifts.
Multiple specialized agents coordinating on tasks.