The Meaning of Agency
“Agency (in humans) is the ability to act with intention, autonomously and freely, making one's own decisions to influence one's environment and achieve goals. It involves exercising control over one's own functioning and life, based on beliefs and values, with reflection and personal responsibility playing a key role.”
According to philosophy, the concept of agency refers to one of the most important qualities of human beings: the ability to act intentionally and, therefore, to achieve purposes or goals guided by reason.
The word comes from the Latin agentia, derived from the verb agere, meaning to do, act or set in motion. From its origin, the term has been tied to the idea of action.
Having agency is, simply put, being able to act with a purpose: having intention, planning, and the ability to carry out actions to achieve a goal.
From Human Agency to Agentic AI
From this idea comes the current concept of Agentic AI. This term is used to describe artificial intelligence systems that don't just generate responses, but can receive a goal, organize steps to reach it, and execute intermediate actions.
Today, some language models (LLM) with the ability to use external tools can search for information, analyze options, break a problem down into tasks and subtasks, and move step by step toward a goal. In that sense, they function as agents: systems that act in a goal-oriented way.
However, it's important to clarify that this agency is functional. AI doesn't have its own will, consciousness, beliefs, values or moral responsibility. It's called agentic because it can operate as an agent in a practical sense, following goals defined by people.
Understanding this difference helps us better understand why we talk about Agentic AI today: not because machines have human agency, but because they can act in an organized, goal-oriented way within the limits set by the people who design and use them.