I was on a call last month where a VP said "we're deploying agentic AI" and what they actually had was a single chatbot connected to a database. That's an agent. A good one, maybe. But calling it "agentic AI" is like calling a single REST endpoint "a microservices architecture." That confusion cost them three months and a budget overrun before anyone caught it.
An AI agent is a thing you build. Agentic AI is how you wire many of those things together. One is a worker. The other is the factory floor.
If you missed Part 1 (AI Assistance vs AI Agents), go read that first. It sets the foundation for what we're covering today.
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Why this confusion is dangerous
