The AI Agent Factory

2.2 Five things people call "AI"

Status
stable
6 min read
Owner
Panaversity
Approved
Panaversity ·

In everyday life. You go away for a week and leave three things to look after your house. A timer turns on the porch light at 7 p.m. every night, the same way each time. That is an automation. A voice assistant answers whenever someone asks it a question, one request at a time. That is an assistant. A house sitter looks after the whole house. They decide what each day needs, and they answer to you for how the week went. That is closest to a worker.

People use one word for five different things. Each one is useful. The AI Worker is the one built to be managed.

ThingWhat it isWho decides the steps
ModelThe trained engine that turns input into output. On its own it has no tools and no memoryNobody. It produces one response
AssistantA product that puts a model behind a chat for whoever is typingThe person, one request at a time
AutomationFixed steps written in advance, run the same way every timeThe person who wrote the steps
AgentA model in a loop with tools. It plans, acts, checks and acts againThe agent, inside the task
AI WorkerA role, defined by its sixteen elements, with a named ownerThe worker, inside its authority

The five do not compete. They fit together. A model sits inside every assistant and every agent. An AI Worker usually does its work through an agent. It may also call automations for the steps that should never change, such as saving each invoice PDF to the right folder. An automation is still the right tool when the steps are known and judgment adds only risk.

Two panels joined by an arrow labeled interact. On the left, a large box labeled AI Worker, a managed role with responsibilities and continuity, with a human owner, bounded authority and evaluations. It contains an Agent box, which chooses steps within a task and has a Model box inside it. It also contains an Automation box, which follows predefined rules. On the right, a separate Assistant box, the interface people interact with, also contains a Model box. It may use tools and agents, and can provide access to an AI Worker. A note says one product can combine several of these concepts.

Figure 2.2. The five kinds fit together. A model sits inside every assistant and agent. A worker works through an agent and may call automations.

Two questions tell the five apart. The first is who decides the steps? The table answers it for each one. The second is who answers for the outcome? This question separates a worker from all the others. Ask both questions about how something is used, not about the product, because one product can be used in several ways. At Brightline, the clerk who happened to be typing used the assistant, but nobody answered for what it did. Brightline used an assistant as if it were a worker. An owner alone is still not enough. Someone in IT owns the script that saves invoice PDFs, and that script is still an automation. A worker needs the whole set: defined responsibilities, bounded authority, continuity (it keeps doing its work over time), evaluations and an owner who answers for its results. The sixteen elements in 2.1 spell out that set in full.

Workers also differ in how long they last. A Delegated AI Worker completes a briefed task on its own machine, then stops. It counts as a worker only inside a defined role with an owner (Chapter 1). A Standing AI Worker has a lasting identity, ongoing responsibilities and its own initiative. Chapter 9 teaches how to govern standing work.

Check yourself

Question 1 / 8 · current

0 answered

A script saves every invoice PDF to the right folder, the same way every time. What is it?

2.1 The anatomy of an AI Worker

The sixteen elements that define an AI Worker, sorted into five groups, and four pairs of elements that are easy to confuse.

2.3 Worker, runtime and channel

Why a worker is defined apart from the runtime that executes it and the channels people reach it through, and two tests that check it.

On this page