Introduction to Agents

Discover what actually works in AI. Join millions of builders, researchers, and labs evaluating agents, models, and frontier technology through crowdsourced benchmarks, competitions, and hackathons.

Science that Compounds: The Need for A New Substrate for Research in the Age of AI

This paper is a perspective from Lightcone Research, an open-source initiative building tooling for scientific research in the age of agentic AI.

Agents

Intelligent agents are considered by many to be the ultimate goal of AI. The classic book by Stuart Russell and Peter Norvig, Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach (Prentice Hall, 1995), defines the field of AI research as “the study and design of rational agents.”

Project Think: building the next generation of AI agents on Cloudflare

Announcing a preview of the next edition of the Agents SDK — from lightweight primitives to a batteries-included platform for AI agents that think, act, and persist.

A tale of two Agent Builders

What two competing solutions to the same design problem tell about the future of designing AI interfaces.

AI, Ethics, and Society — Home

Lightcone Research

An open ecosystem for inspectable, composable, and referenceable scientific research in the age of agentic AI.

Meet Foundry: An AI Startup that Builds, Evaluates, and Improves AI Agents

AI agents team up in Agent Laboratory to speed scientific research

Johns Hopkins University and AMD have developed Agent Laboratory, a new open-source framework that pairs human creativity with AI-powered workflows.

AI experienced through AI co-created tools

AI co-created tools and social spaces as a new medium

The Impact of Artificial Intelligence on Human Thought

This research paper examines, from a multidimensional perspective (cognitive, social, ethical, and philosophical), how AI is transforming human thought. It highlights a cognitive offloading effect: the externalization of mental functions to AI can reduce intellectual engagement and weaken critical thinking. On the social level, algorithmic personalization creates filter bubbles that limit the diversity of opinions and can lead to the homogenization of thought and polarization. This research also describes the mechanisms of algorithmic manipulation (exploitation of cognitive biases, automated disinformation, etc.) that amplify AI's power of influence. Finally, the question of potential artificial consciousness is discussed, along with its ethical implications. The report as a whole underscores the risks that AI poses to human intellectual autonomy and creativity, while proposing avenues (education, transparency, governance) to align AI development with the interests of humanity.

The 2025 AI Agent Index

Agentic AI systems are increasingly capable of performing complex tasks with limited human involvement. The 2025 AI Agent Index documents the origins, design, capabilities, ecosystem, and safety features of 30 prominent AI agents based on publicly available information and correspondence with developers.

AI agent runs amok in Fedora and elsewhere

Agentic AI systems can be used to do a variety of things autonomously on behalf of a human user [...]

The Postman Drop: Introducing the AI Agent Builder

The AI world moves fast, and we’re now entering the era of AI agents. These sophisticated AI systems integrate reasoning and memory, enabling them to autonomously interact with tools, make decisions, execute tasks, and deliver real-time results. AI agents will play an increasingly central role in how organizations operate, which Abhinav Asthana, our co-founder and CEO, discussed in a recent blog post. But systems this powerful are extremely challenging to build—especially without a unified solut...