Agents add reasoning where RPA’s rule engine stops.
RPA is a rule engine. It automates structured, low-skilled tasks where every decision is essentially zero or one, which is why UiPath and Automation Anywhere built real businesses but hit a ceiling: a script either breaks or runs, and it cannot handle uncertainty or unstructured data. Agents add a language model on top, so they can read an email’s style, cope with ambiguity, and self-correct. Cherry’s portfolio company Octomind does this for front-end testing with a self-healing loop that notices when a test goes wrong and tries another path, something a rule engine cannot do. The catch: you still have to give an agent clear boundaries, or it goes rogue.
— The Edge: “AI Agents: The Future of Work?” · Podcast