Imagine; arranging your birthday party, planning your holiday trip or  planning your workplace duties, recommending a study course for your kids, conducting your routine medical check-up. Done by your husband? Wife? Boss in the workplace? No by Agentic AI.

Over the past few years, many of us have become familiar with Generative AI tools such as ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Microsoft Copilot, and image generation systems. These tools have changed the way we write, search for information, create images, and learn new skills. They can answer questions, draft emails, summarise documents, and generate computer code within seconds. As a result, Generative AI has become part of our daily lives, helping students, teachers, researchers, businesses, and many other users.

However, a new type of artificial intelligence is now attracting attention. It is called Agentic AI. While Generative AI mainly creates content in response to user prompts, Agentic AI is designed to achieve goals by planning tasks, making decisions, and carrying out actions with much less human guidance. Instead of simply responding to questions, it can work towards completing an objective.

Birthday Party

Imagine asking AI to help organise a birthday party. Generative AI could prepare a guest list, suggest decorations, write invitations, and recommend games. However, you would still need to book the venue, order the food, and manage the event yourself. An Agentic AI assistant, on the other hand, could take the goal of organising the party, compare venue prices, check availability, order the cake, send invitations, monitor replies, remind you about deadlines, and even adjust the schedule if plans changed. This illustrates the key difference. Generative AI responds to prompts, whereas Agentic AI plans, monitors progress, and continues working until the task is completed or human approval is needed.

A Holiday

Another simple example is planning a holiday. Generative AI can suggest destinations, recommend hotels, estimate travel costs, and create an itinerary. You would still need to compare prices and make bookings yourself. Agentic AI could search for flights, compare accommodation, reserve bookings after your approval, update your calendar, monitor flight delays, and even notify you if cheaper options become available before departure.

The workplace

The workplace is another area where Agentic AI could make a major difference. Consider a manager preparing a monthly report. With Generative AI, the manager uploads the data and asks the AI to summarise it or create graphs. The manager must still gather information, check the figures, and distribute the report. Agentic AI could automatically collect data from authorised systems, identify missing information, contact staff for updates, prepare the report, highlight unusual trends, and send the completed report after approval. This could save many hours of routine work.

Education

Education is another field that could benefit. Today’s Generative AI tools can explain difficult concepts, answer questions, and help students improve their writing. An Agentic AI tutor could monitor a student’s progress, identify weak areas, recommend personalized learning materials, schedule revision sessions, generate practice quizzes, and adjust lessons based on performance. Instead of acting like a digital textbook, it would become an active learning companion.

Healthcare

Healthcare also offers opportunities. Generative AI can summarise medical research, explain diseases, and draft clinical notes. Agentic AI could monitor patients’ appointments, identify missed follow-up visits, remind patients to take medication, schedule routine check-ups, and alert healthcare professionals when warning signs appear. However, healthcare decisions must always remain under human supervision because they directly affect people’s lives.

Although Agentic AI offers exciting possibilities, it also introduces new challenges. Because these systems can make decisions and perform actions, they require careful monitoring and strong safety measures. An incorrect answer from Generative AI may simply require another prompt. However, if Agentic AI automatically books appointments, transfers information, or carries out business processes, mistakes could have much greater consequences. Organisations must therefore ensure these systems operate within clear rules and allow people to review important decisions.

Privacy and security are equally important. Agentic AI often needs access to emails, calendars, databases, financial information, and other digital services to complete tasks effectively. Organisations must carefully manage permissions and protect sensitive information. Users should understand what information the AI can access, what actions it can perform, and when human approval is required.

Despite these challenges, many technology companies see Agentic AI as the next stage of digital transformation. Instead of using separate AI tools for different tasks, future AI assistants may coordinate activities across multiple applications. They could communicate with calendars, spreadsheets, email systems, customer databases, and online services to complete complex tasks with minimal human involvement, functioning more like capable digital employees than simple software applications.

This does not mean Generative AI will disappear. In fact, Agentic AI builds on Generative AI. It still relies on Generative AI to write emails, prepare reports, answer questions, summarise documents, and communicate with users. The difference is that Agentic AI adds planning, reasoning, decision-making, and action. Simply put, Generative AI creates, whereas Agentic AI creates and acts.

As AI continues to evolve, both technologies are likely to become part of everyday life. Generative AI has already transformed how we create and process information. Agentic AI extends these capabilities by helping us complete entire tasks from beginning to end. While human judgement, ethics, and oversight will remain essential, Agentic AI has the potential to reduce repetitive work, improve productivity, and allow people to focus more on creativity, critical thinking, and decision-making. Understanding this new generation of AI will help individuals, businesses, and society prepare for the intelligent assistants of the future.

Dr. Nandana Kumara – Hamilton

Dr Nandana Ranaweera, a professional in the field who introduced  the Generative AI (Chat GPT, Gemini, Capilot etc) to the SriLankiaNZ reader now introduces this amazing  development in Artificial Intelligence in simple language.