Well the easiest way to answer this is to break down any task into two steps

🤔 Plan which is about breaking down a task into sub tasks

👷 Execute which is about completing those sub tasks

Depending on who does each step we have the following cases

💼 When planning and executing happens from a human, we call that work

🧑‍💻 When planning happens from a human and executing from a computer, we call it software engineering which includes AI

🕵️ When planning and executing happens from a computer, we call it an agent

🥷 When planning happens from a computer and executing from a human, we call it a terminator

The distinction between AgenticAI vs “other” AI is around who plans. Having humans plan is more deterministic and auditable so its more suitable for high reliability applications like customer support, medical diagnosis, financial assistants etc. Having computers plan is more adaptable i.e. can do more but can fail more so in tasks where failing is not a big issue this is a more suitable approach to unlock productivity gains.