AI 102 - Exam - Study materials

What are AI agents? 

An artificial intelligence (AI) agent is a software program that can interact with its environment, collect data, and use the data to perform self-determined tasks to meet predetermined goals. Humans set goals, but an AI agent independently chooses the best actions it needs to perform to achieve those goal

AI agents are smart software services that combine generative AI models with contextual data and the ability to automate tasks based on user input and environmental factors that they perceive.


The diagram shows the following process:

  1. A user asks the expense agent a question about expenses that can be claimed.
  2. The expenses agent accepts the question as a prompt.
  3. The agent uses a knowledge store containing expenses policy information to ground the prompt.
  4. The grounded prompt is submitted to the agent's language model to generate a response.
  5. The agent generates an expense claim on behalf of the user and submits it to be processed and generate a check payment.

There are many ways that developers can create AI agents, including multiple frameworks and SDKs.

Azure AI Foundry Agent Service

Azure AI Foundry Agent Service is a managed service in Azure that is designed to provide a framework for creating, managing, and using AI agents within Azure AI Foundry. The service is based on the OpenAI Assistants API but with increased choice of models, data integration, and enterprise security; enabling you to use both the OpenAI SDK and the Azure Foundry SDK to develop agentic solutions.

OpenAI Assistants API

The OpenAI Assistants API provides a subset of the features in Foundry Agent Service, and can only be used with OpenAI models. In Azure, you can use the Assistants API with Azure OpenAI, though in practice the Foundry Agent Service provides greater flexibility and functionality for agent development on Azure.


Semantic Kernel

Semantic Kernel is a lightweight, open-source development kit that you can use to build AI agents and orchestrate multi-agent solutions. The core Semantic Kernel SDK is designed for all kinds of generative AI development, while the Semantic Kernel Agent Framework is a platform specifically optimized for creating agents and implementing agentic solution patterns.


AutoGen

AutoGen is an open-source framework for developing agents rapidly. It's useful as a research and ideation tool when experimenting with agents.


Microsoft 365 Agents SDK

Developers can create self-hosted agents for delivery through a wide range of channels by using the Microsoft 365 Agents SDK. Despite the name, agents built using this SDK are not limited to Microsoft 365, but can be delivered through channels like Slack or Messenger.


Microsoft Copilot Studio

Microsoft Copilot Studio provides a low-code development environment that "citizen developers" can use to quickly build and deploy agents that integrate with a Microsoft 365 ecosystem or commonly used channels like Slack and Messenger. The visual design interface of Copilot Studio makes it a good choice for building agents when you have little or no professional software development experience.


Azure AI Foundry Agent Service

100 XP

Azure AI Foundry Agent Service is a service within Azure that you can use to create, test, and manage AI agents. It provides both a visual agent development experience in the Azure AI Foundry portal and a code-first development experience using the Azure AI Foundry SDK.


Components of an agent

Agents developed using Foundry Agent Service have the following elements:


  • Model: A deployed generative AI model that enables the agent to reason and generate natural language responses to prompts. You can use common OpenAI models and a selection of models from the Azure AI Foundry model catalog.
  • Knowledge: data sources that enable the agent to ground prompts with contextual data. Potential knowledge sources include Internet search results from Microsoft Bing, an Azure AI Search index, or your own data and documents.
  • Tools: Programmatic functions that enable the agent to automate actions. Built-in tools to access knowledge in Azure AI Search and Bing are provided as well as a code interpreter tool that you can use to generate and run Python code. You can also create custom tools using your own code or Azure Functions.

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