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AI Agents: What They Are and How They Will Change Work

Artificial intelligence has moved beyond simply answering questions and generating text. A new generation of AI systems—known as AI agents—is emerging with the ability to plan tasks, use tools, make decisions, and complete multi-step workflows with less human intervention. From managing emails and analyzing data to writing software and assisting customers, AI agents could significantly change how people work. What Are AI Agents? An AI agent is a software system that can perceive information, reason about a goal, take actions, and adapt based on the results. Traditional AI tools usually respond to a specific instruction. For example, you might ask an AI chatbot to summarize a document, and it provides a summary. An AI agent can go further. You could give an agent a goal such as: "Research three competitors, compare their pricing, summarize their main features, and prepare a report." The agent may then: 1) Understand the objective. 2) Break the task into smaller steps. 3) Searc...

Pointers to Pointers

Pointer to Pointers
In C, you can also use pointers that point to pointers. The pointers in turn point to data or even to other pointers. To declare pointers to pointers, just add an asterisk * for each level of reference.
          Fig: Pointer to Pointer
For example, consider the following code:
int x=10;
int *px, **ppx;
px = &x;
ppx = &px;
Let us assume, the memory locations of these variables are as shown in Fig.above
Now if we write,
printf("\n %d", **ppx);
Then, it would print 10, the value of x.

Drawbacks of Pointers
Although pointers are very useful in C, they are not free from limitations. If used incorrectly, pointers can lead to bugs that are difficult to unearth. For example, if you use a pointer to read a memory location but that pointer is pointing to an incorrect location, then you may end up reading 
a wrong value. An erroneous input always leads to an erroneous output. Thus however efficient your program code may be, the output will always be disastrous. Same is the case when writing a value to a particular memory location.
Let us try to find some common errors when using pointers.
int x, *px;
x=10;
*px = 20;
Error: Un-initialized pointer. px is pointing to an unknown memory location. Hence it willoverwrite that location’s contents and store 20 in it.
int x, *px;
x=10;
px = x;
Error: It should be px = &x;
int x=10, y=20, *px, *py;
px = &x, py = &y;
if(px<py) 
printf("\n x is less than y");
else
printf("\n y is less than x");
Error: It should be if(*px< *py)

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