Beyond the Chatbot: Why Most "Agents" are Just Glorified Automation

OVERVIEW: Welcome to The Reasoning Show! We dig into one of the foundational building blocks of modern Generative AI, the AI Agent. So what is an AI Agent, and what do we need to think about for the next couple years? SHOW: 1007SHOW TRANSCRIPT: The Reasoning Show #1007 TranscriptSHOW VIDEO: https://youtu.be/4tdj0S0AyhMSHOW SPONSOR:VENTION - Ready for expert developers who actually deliver? Visit ventionteams.comSHOW NOTES:Topic 1 - We’re 3+ years into the Generative AI era. Why do you think AI Agents, or Agentic AI, is now getting so much attention? Topic 2 - If someone asked you to explain what an AI Agent is, how would you do that? Topic 3 - What are some of the core elements of AI Agents that you’re seeing impact how people think about and use agents?How to define tasksLanguages and frameworksAbility to orchestrate multiple agentsHuman-in-the-Loop vs. AutonomousOther?Topic 4 - AI Agents are going to spark the great “how much should I pay for this?” discussion. Have you given this any thought yet?  Topic 5 - How do you expect to use AI agents in your day-to-day work, and how do you expect this to impact Enterprise businesses?ESSENTIAL READINGBuilding Effective Agents" by Anthropic: designing agents with tools, memory, reasoning loopsA Comprehensive Review of AI Agents: how agents perceive, reason, decide, actTop 20 AI Agent Concepts You Should Know: covering ReAct, Chain of Thought, memory typesAI Agents in Action: Foundations for Evaluation and Governance: structured foundation for safety aspects of agent deploymentEssential ViewingAI Agentic Design Patterns w/ AutoGen: build autonomous agents that use toolsAI Agent Systems w/ crewAI: orchestrating teams of agentsLangGraph Course: how to build stateful, reliable agentsFrameworks & Tools LangGraph: standard for complex, stateful agents (nodes, edges, loops)CrewAI: Best for structured task delegation and multi-agent collaborationAutoGen: Microsoft's framework for multi-agent conversational systemsModel Context Protocol (MCP): standard for connecting agents, tools, datan8n: no-code/low-code visual agent buildingFEEDBACK?Email: show @ the enterprise ai show dot comeBluesky: @EntAIShow.bsky.socialTwitter/X: @TheEntAIShowInstagram: @TheEntAIShow