For technology adopters looking for the next big thing, “agentic AI” is the future. At least, that's what the marketing pitches and tech industry T-shirts say.
What makes an artificial intelligence product “agentic” depends on who's selling it. But the promise is usually that it's a step beyond today's generative AI chatbots.
Chatbots, however useful, are all talk and no action. They can answer questions, retrieve and summarize information, write papers and generate images, music, video and lines of code. AI agents, by contrast, are supposed to be able to take actions autonomously on a person's behalf.
If you're confused, you're not alone. Google searches for “agentic” skyrocketed from near obscurity a year ago to a peak this fall. Merriam-Webster hasn't added it to the dictionary but lists “agentic” as a slang or trending term defined as: “Able to accomplish results with autonomy, used especially in reference to artificial intelligence.”
A new report Tuesday by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Boston Consulting Group, who surveyed more than 2,000 business executives around the world, describes agentic AI as a “new class of systems” that “can plan, act, and learn on their own.”
“They are not just tools to be operated or assistants waiting for instructions,” says the MIT Sloan Management Review report. "Increasingly, they behave like autonomous teammates, capable of executing multistep processes and adapting as they go.”
AI chatbots — such as the original ChatGPT that debuted three years ago this month — rely on systems called large language models that predict the next word in a sentence based on the huge trove of human writings they've been trained on. They can sound remarkably human, especially when given a voice, but are effectively performing a kind of word completion.
That's different from what AI developers — including ChatGPT's maker, OpenAI, and tech giants like Amazon, Google, IBM, Microsoft and Salesforce — have in mind for AI agents.
“A generative AI-based chatbot will say, ‘Here are the great ideas’ … and then be done,” said Swami Sivasubramanian, vice president of Agentic AI at Amazon Web Services, in an interview this week. “It’s useful, but what makes things agentic is that it goes beyond what a chatbot does.”
Sivasubramanian, a longtime Amazon employee, took on his new role helping to lead work on AI agents in Amazon's cloud computing division earlier this year. He sees great promise in AI systems that can be given a “high-level goal” and can break it down into a series of steps and act upon them. “I truly believe agentic AI is going to be one of the biggest transformations since the beginning of the cloud,” he said.
At its most basic level, an AI agent works like a traditional, human-crafted computer program that executes a job, like launching an application. Combined with an AI large language model, however, it can search for knowledge that enables it to complete tasks without explicit, step-by-step instructions. That means, instead of just helping you draft the language of an email, it can theoretically handle the whole process — receiving a message from your coworker, figuring out what you might want to say, and firing off the response on its own.
For most consumers, the first encounters with AI agents could be in realms like online shopping. Set a budget and some preferences and AI agents can buy things or arrange travel bookings using your credit card. In the longer run, the hope is that they can do more complex tasks with access to your computer and a set of guidelines to follow.
“I’d love an agent that just looked at all my medical bills and explanations of benefits and figured out how to pay them,” or another one that worked like a “personal shield” fighting off email spam and phishing attempts, said Thomas Dietterich, a professor emeritus at Oregon State University who has worked on developing AI assistants for decades.
Dietterich has some quibbles with companies using “agentic” to describe “any action a computer might do, including just looking things up on the web,” but is enthused about the possibilities of AI systems with the “freedom and responsibility” to refine goals and respond to changing conditions as they work on people's behalf. They can even orchestrate a team of “subagents.”
“We can imagine a world in which there are thousands or millions of agents operating and they can form coalitions,” Dietterich said. “Can they form cartels? Would there be law enforcement (AI) agents?"
Milind Tambe has been researching AI agents that work together for three decades, since the first International Conference on Multi-Agent Systems gathered in San Francisco in 1995. Tambe said he's been “amused” by the sudden popularity of “agentic” as an adjective. Previously, the word describing something that has agency was mostly found in other academic fields, such as psychology or chemistry.
But computer scientists have been debating what an agent is for as long as Tambe has been studying them.
In the 1990s, “people agreed that some software appeared more like an agent, and some felt less like an agent, and there was not a perfect dividing line,” said Tambe, a professor at Harvard University. “Nonetheless, it seemed useful to use the word ‘agent’ to describe software or robotic entities acting autonomously in an environment, sensing the environment, reacting to it, planning, thinking.”
The prominent AI researcher Andrew Ng, co-founder of online learning company Coursera, helped advocate for popularizing the adjective “agentic” more than a year ago to encompass a broader spectrum of AI tasks. At the time, he also said he liked that mainly “technical people” were describing it that way.
“When I see an article that talks about ‘agentic’ workflows, I’m more likely to read it, since it’s less likely to be marketing fluff and more likely to have been written by someone who understands the technology,” Ng wrote in a June 2024 blog post.
Ng didn't respond to requests for comment on whether he still thinks that.
The front of a T-shirt designed for artificial intelligence consulting company Lantern shown in Providence, R.I., on Monday, Nov. 17, 2025. (AP Photo/Matt O'Brien)
ELIZABETHTOWN, Ky. (AP) — Vice President JD Vance joined the grieving family of a Kentucky man who was the seventh U.S. service member to die in combat during the Iran war as his remains were brought back to the U.S. Monday evening.
The dignified transfer, a solemn event that honors U.S. service members killed in action, took place at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware for Army Sgt. Benjamin N. Pennington, 26, of Glendale, Kentucky. He died Sunday after being wounded during a March 1 attack on the Prince Sultan Air Base, Saudi Arabia, a Pentagon statement said.
Vance and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth saluted alongside high ranking military officials as the transfer case draped with the American flag was carried from the military aircraft and into an awaiting vehicle.
Mike Bell, retired pastor of Glendale Christian Church, said he’d known Pennington since he was a toddler and got a call from Pennington's father when the soldier was hurt.
“I talked to Tim Saturday morning, and he was doing a little better, and they were talking about maybe moving him to Germany,” Bell said. Tim Pennington called again that evening, Bell said, to ask for prayers as his son's condition was worsening, and then later told him the soldier had succumbed to his injuries.
“He was just a quiet person,” said Bell, noting that Pennington attended the church’s after-school program. “I mean, he never attracted attention because he was just steady doing what he needed to do to do it.”
Pennington was assigned to the 1st Space Battalion, 1st Space Brigade of the U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command based at Fort Carson, Colorado.
The unit’s mission focused on “missile warning, GPS, and long-haul satellite communications,” according to their website.
“This just breaks my heart,” Keith Taul, judge-executive of Hardin County, where Pennington was from, said in a statement emailed to The Associated Press. “I have known the family for at least 30 years. I can’t imagine the pain and suffering they are experiencing.”
Glendale is an unincorporated town of about 300 residents south of the Hardin County seat of Elizabethtown.
In a statement posted on social media, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear called Pennington “a hero who sacrificed everything serving our country.”
The other six service members killed since the conflict began on Feb. 28 were Army reservists killed in Kuwait when an Iranian drone struck an operations center at a civilian port.
President Donald Trump on Saturday joined grieving families at Dover Air Force Base at the dignified transfer for those six U.S. soldiers.
The dignified transfer is considered one of the most somber duties of any commander in chief. During his first term, Trump said bearing witness to the transfer was “the toughest thing I have to do” as president.
Pennington graduated in 2017 from Central Hardin High School, where he was enrolled in the automotive technology pathway, district spokesman John Wright told the AP. Former automotive tech instructor Tom Pitt, who taught Pennington in 2017 at Hardin County Early College and Career Center, called him “an American hero.”
“A lot of times as a teacher, you have students who are smart, you have students who are charismatic, who are likable, dare I say, enchanting,” said Pitt, who called Pennington Nate. “Rarely do you have students who are all of those. And Ben Pennington was all of those. He was basically the quintessential all-American.”
Photos on his and family members' Facebook pages show that Pennington achieved the rank of Eagle Scout in August 2017. His Eagle project was the demolition of some old baseball dugouts in Glendale, said Darin Life, former committee chairman for Troop 221.
“If you look up Eagle Scout, his picture’s probably there,” said Life, who knew Pennington throughout his scouting career. “He loved his country. I would have expected nothing less of him than to lose his life protecting his country.”
A month after his Eagle ceremony, Pennington posted a photo of himself taking the oath of enlistment. He entered the service as a unit supply specialist and was assigned to the Space and Missile Command on June 10, 2025, the Army said in a release.
Among his awards and decorations were the Army Commendation Medal, Army Achievement Medal, Army Good Conduct Medal, National Defense Service Medal, Global War on Terrorism Service Medal and the Army Service Ribbon.
“The U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command is deeply saddened by the loss of Sgt. Pennington,” said Lt. Gen. Sean A. Gainey, USASMDC commanding general. “He gave the ultimate sacrifice for the country he loved.”
Col. Michael F. Dyer, 1st Space Brigade commander, described Pennington as “a dedicated and experienced noncommissioned officer who led with strength, professionalism and sense of duty.”
Pennington will be posthumously promoted to staff sergeant, the Pentagon said.
Associated Press reporters Konstantin Toropin in Washington, Hallie Golden in Seattle and Adrian Sainz in Memphis, Tennessee, contributed to this report.
A U.S. Army carry team places the transfer case with the remains of U.S. Army Sgt. Benjamin N. Pennington, 26, of Glendale, Ky., the seventh U.S. service member to die in combat during the Iran war, in the the transfer vehicle during a dignified transfer Monday, March 9, 2026, at Dover Air Force Base, Del. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)
Vice President JD Vance, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine and other military leaders pray before a dignified transfer for U.S. Army Sgt. Benjamin N. Pennington, 26, of Glendale, Ky., the seventh U.S. service member to die in combat during the Iran war, Monday, March 9, 2026, at Dover Air Force Base, Del. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)
Vice President JD Vance, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine, and other military leaders, salute during a dignified transfer for Sgt. Benjamin N. Pennington, 26, of Glendale, Ky., Monday March 9, 2026, at Dover Air Force Base, Del. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth salutes as an U.S. Army carry team moves the transfer case containing the remains of Sgt. Benjamin N. Pennington, 26, of Glendale, Ky., Monday March 9, 2026, at Dover Air Force Base, Del. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)
This image provided by the U.S. Army shows U.S. Army Sgt. Benjamin N. Pennington, 26, of Glendale, Ky. (U.S. Amy via AP)
