Speaker 1: Hey, just quickly from me before we get into it.
Speaker 1: If you're using AI but still doing too much manually,
Speaker 1: Neo and I have built something for you. It's called
Speaker 1: the AI Agent boot Camp, and it's a four week
Speaker 1: virtual program and you'll walk away with agents already built
Speaker 1: and working. Spot's limited and all the details are in
Speaker 1: the show notes. You've probably heard the word agents thrown
Speaker 1: around a lot lately, and if you've been nodding along
Speaker 1: while quietly having no idea what it actually means, you're
Speaker 1: not alone. The AI companies have done a genuinely terrible
Speaker 1: job of naming things agents, agentic, GPTs, projects, gems. It's
Speaker 1: a lot of words for concepts that, once you understand them,
Speaker 1: are actually pretty straightforward. In this episode, Neo and I
Speaker 1: cut through all of that. We cover what an agent
Speaker 1: actually is and why it's different from agentic AI, which
Speaker 1: is a distinction that's important to know, and we get
Speaker 1: into how both individuals and teams can start aren't using them,
Speaker 1: from automating meeting minutes to building a knowledge agent that
Speaker 1: fields your team's repetitive questions so that you don't have to.
Speaker 1: By the end, you'll know exactly what an agent is
Speaker 1: and have a clear sense of where to start building
Speaker 1: one for yourself. Welcome to how IAI with me Doctor
Speaker 1: Amantha Imba and Neo Applin, head of Inventium AI. Each
Speaker 1: episode we share one practical way to use AI better
Speaker 1: at work and in life. No fluff, no tech jargon,
Speaker 1: just things you can use straight away. Neo, I want
Speaker 1: to talk about agents today, and I'm sure there's lots
Speaker 1: of people that know what an agent is, but then
Speaker 1: there are an awful lot of people that are probably
Speaker 1: quite confused as to what is an agent? What is
Speaker 1: a gentic? Is there a difference? Is that the same thing?
Speaker 1: How does it relate to my work life? So let's
Speaker 1: start off with some definitions. What is an agent?
Speaker 2: The first thing I'm going to say is the way
Speaker 2: that these companies have named these things is terrible. There
Speaker 2: are so many confusing names out there as projects as gpds,
Speaker 2: there's agents, there's agentic and all those kind of things.
Speaker 2: So here's how I like to look at it. An
Speaker 2: agent is generally a thing that we will use. I'm
Speaker 2: talking now about an agent, a GPT or a project
Speaker 2: to help you to do something as a reusable expert.
Speaker 2: In other words, help me to do the thing in
Speaker 2: the same way every single time. And what it's not
Speaker 2: is to do the entire thing. So it's not like
Speaker 2: an entire workflow. It's just to do one thing. So
Speaker 2: you might have an agent that maybe checks your work.
Speaker 2: It might be an agent that potentially you drop in
Speaker 2: the meeting transcript and will give you the meeting action
Speaker 2: items and notes and all those kind of things the
Speaker 2: way that you want your action items and notes to
Speaker 2: be done.
Speaker 1: So it's an agent, okay, And is that different from AGENTICAI.
Speaker 2: To go to. Yes, So agentic is where it does
Speaker 2: the things not in the same way every single time.
Speaker 2: It's kind of got a goal and it may have
Speaker 2: some tools and we'll figure out how it's going to
Speaker 2: reach that goal using the tools, and you leave it
Speaker 2: to that thing to decide what to do. So, for example,
Speaker 2: you might have an urgentic thing which has an email
Speaker 2: tool so it can email in and out and read
Speaker 2: emails and things like that. It might have file access
Speaker 2: so it can then access your files and so you
Speaker 2: can then give it a goal. Hey, you do this thing,
Speaker 2: and it might read emails, it might read files, it
Speaker 2: might figure outs and things, might get attach a file
Speaker 2: to an email and send it off, so it's like
Speaker 2: it will decide what to do. Now, with agents, it's
Speaker 2: more about you needed to be bound to do the
Speaker 2: same thing the same way every single time, and it's
Speaker 2: often a smaller thing to achieve in type for example,
Speaker 2: like a Riunning style guide checkup. You know, it just
Speaker 2: does one thing, does it really well? Does it reliably
Speaker 2: every single time?
Speaker 1: And today and for the next few weeks, we are
Speaker 1: going to be focusing on a gents as opposed to
Speaker 1: agentic AI. So when it comes to agents, depending on
Speaker 1: what AI tool you're mostly using, can you took us
Speaker 1: through like what the equivalents are where they we're in
Speaker 1: co pilot versus Claude versus Chattipit versus Gemini.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Before I do that, I just want to quickly
Speaker 2: say you do not need to be a geeky rocket
Speaker 2: scientist AI a kind of person to be able to
Speaker 2: build an agent AGENTIC Yep. Maybe that's something very different workflows, yep. Maybe,
Speaker 2: but this is all reasonably easy for just normal regular
Speaker 2: human beings to be able to do so in the
Speaker 2: different tools they are called in Copilot's called an agent.
Speaker 2: That's one I'm going to start there because they've actually
Speaker 2: called it that. In Chichipitt it's called a GPT. In
Speaker 2: Gemini they're called gems, and in Claude generally one ones
Speaker 2: we're talking about where we're talking about actually projects. Interestingly enough,
Speaker 2: projects or another kind of term. Chechipt also has projects
Speaker 2: as a similar kind of thing, and also there are
Speaker 2: notebooks in a copilot as well. So these are all
Speaker 2: different flavors of agents, and the thing that they've all
Speaker 2: got in common is you can give it an instruction
Speaker 2: in other words, a prompt, a small or a large prompt.
Speaker 2: Here's what I want you to do. And you can
Speaker 2: also give it some files so that it has some knowledge.
Speaker 2: Maybe it's like a here's a template to use, or
Speaker 2: it might be here's some knowledge that I need from you.
Speaker 2: So it's instructions and a file or files, and that's
Speaker 2: all you are giving your agent so it can do
Speaker 2: the thing. So it doesn't have a bunch of tools
Speaker 2: and it can't just go things by itself. And it's
Speaker 2: also very responsive like you. It can only do things
Speaker 2: when someone asks it to do the thing. It doesn't
Speaker 2: do things at three in the morning. But yeah, so agents, GPTs,
Speaker 2: projects and gems are generally the names of these things.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about how individuals can use them, and then
Speaker 1: I want to talk about how teams can use agents.
Speaker 1: And for the purposes of today, we're just going to
Speaker 1: use the term agents. So what are some of the
Speaker 1: way that individuals can get value from creating an agent to.
Speaker 2: Do the things that you do all the time just
Speaker 2: to make your life better. So if you are that
Speaker 2: unfortunately I've done this before, and it sucks to be
Speaker 2: that person who has to get the meeting transcript and
Speaker 2: then turn out the minutes and then check the minutes
Speaker 2: and then email them out to people. If that's something
Speaker 2: you do every single week or you've got multiple meetings,
Speaker 2: it's great to build an agent to be able to
Speaker 2: do that because it then speeds up your time and
Speaker 2: all you got to do is check what it's done.
Speaker 2: So it's like a really helpful small assistant there. You
Speaker 2: might have something like a voice and style checkert if
Speaker 2: you'd like. Maybe that's a company one, but maybe that's
Speaker 2: even just yours, where you might say, hey, i've got
Speaker 2: some text here, I've got to look after the website.
Speaker 2: Maybe you're not a marketing kind of person and you've
Speaker 2: given a couple of dot points and said, now turn
Speaker 2: this into Vivee voice and style and sort of then
Speaker 2: do things like that also good for like bulk emails
Speaker 2: and things like that, just to make sure it's actually
Speaker 2: hitting the right beats. So it's something you just do
Speaker 2: small and often. Other ones might be research assistance. So
Speaker 2: I've got one which is a research prompt builder. I
Speaker 2: think we'll talk about that in another episode. But yeah,
Speaker 2: when I'm doing researching, I do a lot of research
Speaker 2: just to make sure I'm keeping up to date on
Speaker 2: different industries and how AI is going and things like that,
Speaker 2: and so I've got a research prompt buildup that helps
Speaker 2: me to build those things up. So the things that
Speaker 2: you do more than I'm going to say once or
Speaker 2: twice a week every single week, ask yourself, is this
Speaker 2: something that you can put into an agent? Because your
Speaker 2: job is going to be so different to mine and Amantha's,
Speaker 2: you'll figure out what you're going to do more often.
Speaker 2: Maybe that's something you can build into an agent.
Speaker 1: Now let's look at teams. How can teams get benefit
Speaker 1: from agents similar.
Speaker 2: Kind of things in order to make their lives better?
Speaker 2: And so some of them is about the things that
Speaker 2: you do that you have to do all the time
Speaker 2: as a team. So maybe meeting minutes is really handy thing.
Speaker 2: Maybe multiple people are doing meeting minutes. There's that, but
Speaker 2: maybe there's all things like reports. So there's a way
Speaker 2: that we produce those types of reports. And sometimes what
Speaker 2: you want to do is have that same report being
Speaker 2: kind of built the same way, even though it may
Speaker 2: be built by different people. And here's the thing that
Speaker 2: I might have a different style the way I'll do
Speaker 2: my report, you'll do your style to the way you
Speaker 2: do your report. It would be great to have an
Speaker 2: agent that has like the approved way that it grabs
Speaker 2: these data in and then crafts it and then puts
Speaker 2: it into the right headings and things like that. So
Speaker 2: the things that you and your team do often I
Speaker 2: think they're really good things to do to build as
Speaker 2: an agent. The other thing is the things you wish
Speaker 2: you wouldn't do, So how can you offload some of
Speaker 2: those things to AI? So that's another one. And the
Speaker 2: third is the questions that you often have or that
Speaker 2: you get as a team. So if you're in HR,
Speaker 2: I imagine you get an awful lot of questions on
Speaker 2: how do I change my bank details? When's the next
Speaker 2: pay run? Those kind of questions. If you're in like
Speaker 2: a customer service role, you're going to get lots of
Speaker 2: questions on this thing is broken, how do I fix it?
Speaker 2: And then you'll probably know a lot of that in
Speaker 2: your brain. But wouldn't be better if there was an
Speaker 2: agent that did a look up of your company procedures
Speaker 2: or the FAQs and things like that. And of course
Speaker 2: here's that the other thing, which is why are you
Speaker 2: answering this questions? Wouldn't be possible to build an agent
Speaker 2: that answers those questions for those people, so you don't
Speaker 2: even have to get involved. So it's really useful for
Speaker 2: those kind of things. So yeah, if it's often regular
Speaker 2: you do it the same way as a team, or
Speaker 2: people are pestering you and your team, then maybe what
Speaker 2: you can do is create an agent feed at the
Speaker 2: knowledge with the files and things like that so that
Speaker 2: people can self service those answers.
Speaker 1: So what now and I are going to be doing
Speaker 1: over the next few weeks is we are going to
Speaker 1: be digging deeper into agents. So we are going to
Speaker 1: be unpacking things like, if you're a knowledge worker, what
Speaker 1: are the must have agents for all knowledge workers. We
Speaker 1: are going to go into some of the tasks that
Speaker 1: you should never do manually again, we are going to
Speaker 1: go into Neo's favorite AG, the one that he uses
Speaker 1: pretty much every single day. And we're also going to
Speaker 1: get into how can you build a knowledge agent that
Speaker 1: answers every one oh one question like there was just
Speaker 1: talking about, so that you don't have to So if
Speaker 1: you want to go deeper into the world of agents,
Speaker 1: make sure you have hit subscribe or follow, because we
Speaker 1: will be sharing a lot more info about agents over
Speaker 1: the coming weeks. How i AI was hosted by me
Speaker 1: Amantha Imber and Neo Applan. A big thank you to
Speaker 1: Martin Imba who does our sound editing, and Jim Rubio
Speaker 1: for production support, and thank you to John Kilby who
Speaker 1: composed the theme music.