{"about":{"site":"https://codewithpapers.app","non_affiliation":"Code with Papers and Syntology are not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Papers with Code, Meta, or the pwc-archive mirror.","licence":"CC BY-SA 4.0","licence_url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode","attribution":"https://codewithpapers.app/attribution","modified":"archive material modified by Syntology; see the attribution page"},"url":"/paper/proagent-from-robotic-process-automation-to","title":"ProAgent: From Robotic Process Automation to Agentic Process Automation","arxiv_id":"2311.10751","date":"2023-11-02","proceeding":null,"authors":["Yining Ye","Xin Cong","Shizuo Tian","Jiannan Cao","Hao Wang","Yujia Qin","Yaxi Lu","Heyang Yu","Huadong Wang","Yankai Lin","Zhiyuan Liu","Maosong Sun"],"abstract":"From ancient water wheels to robotic process automation (RPA), automation technology has evolved throughout history to liberate human beings from arduous tasks. Yet, RPA struggles with tasks needing human-like intelligence, especially in elaborate design of workflow construction and dynamic decision-making in workflow execution. As Large Language Models (LLMs) have emerged human-like intelligence, this paper introduces Agentic Process Automation (APA), a groundbreaking automation paradigm using LLM-based agents for advanced automation by offloading the human labor to agents associated with construction and execution. We then instantiate ProAgent, an LLM-based agent designed to craft workflows from human instructions and make intricate decisions by coordinating specialized agents. Empirical experiments are conducted to detail its construction and execution procedure of workflow, showcasing the feasibility of APA, unveiling the possibility of a new paradigm of automation driven by agents. 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