An AI agent is software that uses a large language model as its reasoning engine. You give it a goal, it builds a plan from the information you provide, and if you have given it access to the right services, usually through MCP servers or similar connections, it carries that plan out on its own. Can it run part of your business? Yes. Should it, today? That depends entirely on whether you have done your own learning first, and this is where almost every leader gets it wrong.
What an agent actually is
Strip away the hype and it is straightforward. A chatbot answers. An agent acts. It works towards the goal you set, using the services and permissions you granted, without you steering each step. I say this as someone who has wired this up rather than read about it: anglero.com runs a public MCP endpoint, and I am the first keynote speaker listed in the official MCP registry, which means AI agents can discover and interact with my business directly.
The mistake: giving an agent your old business
Here is the thing nobody tells you. If you hand an agent part of your business before you have gone through the learning curve yourself, it will faithfully run a part of your old business. Efficiently, tirelessly, and entirely inside the assumptions you had before AI existed in your company.
You will never reach the new business underneath: the new opportunities, the new revenue, the efficiencies, the things you could not previously see. Approach agents from a pre-AI mindset and you get pre-AI results, delivered faster. The limitation was never the technology.
What the learning curve actually changed for me
I run a one-person company, and the biggest change was not output. It was me. The way I work, strategise and think. I question the business differently. I detail things differently. Above all, I changed the size of my goals, because I no longer limit myself.
When I was a nine-to-five employee waiting on colleagues, my mindset had a ceiling. Now, when an idea feels ridiculous, the agent does not treat it as ridiculous. It treats it as another instruction. That is a genuinely new way of thinking, and it only arrives through use. Reinvention happens from the inside out, and no agent will do that part for you.
Where agents genuinely fail
Three honest limits. First, an agent acts on the goal you actually wrote, not the one you meant, and vague goals produce confidently wrong work. Second, it can only reach what you connected it to, so the value depends on the access and boundaries you define, which is a governance decision before it is a technical one. Third, when software acts autonomously on your behalf, accountability does not move with it. It stays with the company, and the EU AI Act treats that accountability as yours.
The right order
Do not start with “I want an AI agent.” Start with the work: use AI yourself, daily, on your real business. Retrain your habits, expectations, goals, assumptions about your market and your numbers. Build your own counsel around it. When you are genuinely comfortable, the statement changes from “I want an agent” to “I know which part of my new business an agent should run.”
At that point you are not automating what you had. You are operating a different company, and the agent is running a part of it.
Frequently asked questions
What is an AI agent in simple terms?
Software that uses a large language model as its reasoning engine. You give it a goal, it forms a plan from the information available, and it executes that plan using the services and permissions you have granted it, typically through MCP servers or similar connections. A chatbot answers questions. An agent takes action.
Can an AI agent run part of my business?
Technically yes, for defined goals with defined access. The more useful question is whether it should yet. An agent deployed before the leadership has learned to work with AI will efficiently run a part of the old business, inside pre-AI assumptions, and never surface the new opportunities that the learning curve reveals.
What is the difference between an AI agent and a chatbot?
A chatbot responds to prompts. An agent pursues a goal independently: it plans, uses connected tools and services, and completes multi-step work without being steered at each stage.
What are the risks of using AI agents in business?
Agents act on the goal as written rather than as intended, so vague objectives produce confident errors. Their reach is defined by the access granted, making boundaries a governance decision. And autonomous action does not transfer accountability: responsibility remains with the company, including under the EU AI Act.
Thomas Anglero is a Strategic AI Advisor, keynote speaker and author of Intro to Artificial Intelligence. He has delivered over 450 keynotes across 30 countries for organisations including IBM, the WHO, the World Government Summit and the European Commission. He founded the IBM Watson AI Lab for Cancer at the Oslo Cancer Cluster and closed over $500 million in enterprise transformation deals as CTO and Chief Innovation Officer at Cognizant.
If you are leading your organisation through this, I work with a limited number of senior leaders each quarter. Get in touch at Anglero.com.