Multimodal, Real-Time AI Agent Systems

Chapter 1. Intelligent Agents and Collaborative AI

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You’ve likely seen the term ‘AI Agent’ popping up everywhere, often described as the next big thing in artificial intelligence. But what does that term actually mean? Beyond the hype, how does an agent really work “under the hood”? This chapter is designed to answer those questions by taking you on a practical journey from the ground up.

We’ll begin by exploring the five distinct stages of agent evolution, starting with the foundational ideas from the pre-generative AI era. We’ll then move through the rise of Foundation Models, the addition of knowledge with RAG, and the birth of agents that can act. With that historical context, we’ll establish a new, robust definition of what an agent truly is, moving beyond a simple buzzword to a concrete engineering concept.

Once we have our definition, we’ll get our hands dirty. We’ll walk you through the core components of an agent and show you how to build the logic for one from scratch. Finally, we’ll ...