Maarten Grootendorst

That’s actually been one of the more complex topics for us to define, because the field changes so quickly. What fundamentally is an agent when the definition shifts every two months? It’s a bit of a hot take, but I really do think an agent is an LLM in a for-loop with some tools, some memory, and perhaps some guardrails. When you boil it all down, that’s essentially it.

Fair enough. The key distinction is whether the system makes its own decisions about when and why to use a tool, versus being put in a pipeline where you explicitly say “always do steps one, two, and three.” An agent might decide to do steps 3, 3, 1, 2, 1, 3 — deciding on its own when and where to use specific tools. I think that’s maybe the best distinction between what is and isn’t an agent.

I love personal agents — they’re very cool and interesting. At the same time, I’m very worried about security. We’ve seen people’s keys exposed, things deleted that shouldn’t be deleted. We’re in very early stages. Give it a little more time, and it will be amazing.