From Cog to Colony: Why the AI Taxonomy Matters
TL;DR for operators Most organisations do not need “Agentic AI” because it sounds more advanced. They need the smallest reliable architecture that can complete the job without creating a private zoo of semi-autonomous software creatures. The paper behind this article, AI Agents vs. Agentic AI: A Conceptual Taxonomy, Applications and Challenges, argues that AI Agents and Agentic AI are not interchangeable labels.1 An AI Agent is usually a bounded system: it interprets a task, calls tools, uses context, and produces an action or output. Agentic AI is a broader system pattern: multiple specialised agents coordinate, share memory, decompose goals, recover from failures, and work toward higher-level objectives. ...