Agent

An AI system set up to take actions toward a goal, not just answer a question. An agent can plan steps, use tools, check the result, and try again, often with little or no input between steps. This is the noun behind agentic AI. The distinction that matters for care and for governance is action: a tool that advises leaves the decision and the act with a person, while an agent does the act, which changes who is accountable when something goes wrong and what oversight the system needs.

Terms like this come up in real clinical scenarios across the HelloAI courses: bite-sized modules with verifiable certificates. An account takes one minute, no password needed.