mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

Exploring Autonomous Agents through the Lens of Large Language Models: A Review

arXiv 2404.04442 ↗First posted 5 Apr 2024cs.AIcited by 30

On the map: LLM agents and tool use → General LLM agent frameworks and benchmarks

Abstract (arXiv)

Large Language Models (LLMs) are transforming artificial intelligence, enabling autonomous agents to perform diverse tasks across various domains. These agents, proficient in human-like text comprehension and generation, have the potential to revolutionize sectors from customer service to healthcare. However, they face challenges such as multimodality, human value alignment, hallucinations, and evaluation. Techniques like prompting, reasoning, tool utilization, and in-context learning are being explored to enhance their capabilities. Evaluation platforms like AgentBench, WebArena, and ToolLLM provide robust methods for assessing these agents in complex scenarios. These advancements are leading to the development of more resilient and capable autonomous agents, anticipated to become integral in our digital lives, assisting in tasks from email responses to disease diagnosis. The future of AI, with LLMs at the forefront, is promising.

Key facts. Cited by 30 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Placed in General LLM agent frameworks and benchmarks, one of 16 directions in LLM agents and tool use. Builds on 84 of its 110 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 5 Apr 2024.

Builds on

84 of 110 references.

Closest ancestors · 12

Same direction, newest first

  1. 2024Towards better Human-Agent Alignment: Assessing Task Utility in LLM-Powered Applications14 Feb
  2. 2024Understanding the planning of LLM agents: A survey5 Feb
  3. 2024Large Language Model based Multi-Agents: A Survey of Progress and Challenges21 Jan
  4. 2024Exploring Large Language Model based Intelligent Agents: Definitions, Methods, and Prospects7 Jan
  5. 2023Large Language Models Empowered Agent-based Modeling and Simulation: A Survey and Perspectives19 Dec
  6. 2023Evaluating Language-Model Agents on Realistic Autonomous Tasks18 Dec
  7. 2023Formally Specifying the High-Level Behavior of LLM-Based Agents12 Oct
  8. 2023The Rise and Potential of Large Language Model Based Agents: A Survey14 Sep
  9. 2023A Survey on Large Language Model based Autonomous Agents22 Aug
  10. 2023ProAgent: Building Proactive Cooperative Agents with Large Language Models22 Aug
  11. 2023Enhancing Trust in LLM-Based AI Automation Agents: New Considerations and Future Challenges10 Aug
  12. 2023AgentBench: Evaluating LLMs as Agents7 Aug

Other references · 72

  1. 2017Attention Is All You Needcited by 59,932
  2. 2023GPT-4 Technical Reportcited by 18,132
  3. 2019Exploring the Limits of Transfer Learning with a Unified Text-to-Text Transformercited by 14,491
  4. 2023LLaMA: Open and Efficient Foundation Language Modelscited by 13,958
  5. 2019RoBERTa: A Robustly Optimized BERT Pretraining Approachcited by 13,266
  6. 2022Chain-of-Thought Prompting Elicits Reasoning in Large Language Modelscited by 12,302
  7. 2022ReAct: Synergizing Reasoning and Acting in Language Modelscited by 8,355
  8. 2023Direct Preference Optimization: Your Language Model is Secretly a Reward Modelcited by 7,916
  9. 2023Efficient Memory Management for Large Language Model Serving with PagedAttentioncited by 5,767
  10. 2022Self-Consistency Improves Chain of Thought Reasoning in Language Modelscited by 5,601
  11. 2019DistilBERT, a distilled version of BERT: smaller, faster, cheaper and lightercited by 4,243
  12. 2023Reflexion: Language Agents with Verbal Reinforcement Learningcited by 4,064
38 more
  1. 2021Prefix-Tuning: Optimizing Continuous Prompts for Generationcited by 3,878
  2. 2023Tree of Thoughts: Deliberate Problem Solving with Large Language Modelscited by 3,155
  3. 2019Fine-Tuning Language Models from Human Preferencescited by 2,124
  4. 2023Efficient Streaming Language Models with Attention Sinkscited by 2,115
  5. 2023WebArena: A Realistic Web Environment for Building Autonomous Agentscited by 1,908
  6. 2023AutoGen: Enabling Next-Gen LLM Applications via Multi-Agent Conversationcited by 1,906
  7. 2023ToolLLM: Facilitating Large Language Models to Master 16000+ Real-world APIscited by 1,880
  8. 2023A Survey on Hallucination in Large Language Models: Principles, Taxonomy, Challenges, and Open Questionscited by 1,582
  9. 2022Competition-Level Code Generation with AlphaCodecited by 1,427
  10. 2023MemGPT: Towards LLMs as Operating Systemscited by 1,295
  11. 2023HuggingGPT: Solving AI Tasks with ChatGPT and its Friends in Hugging Facecited by 1,173
  12. 2023Graph of Thoughts: Solving Elaborate Problems with Large Language Modelscited by 873
  13. 2022Ignore Previous Prompt: Attack Techniques For Language Modelscited by 760
  14. 2021Prompt Programming for Large Language Models: Beyond the Few-Shot Paradigmcited by 599
  15. 2018Fundamentals of Recurrent Neural Network (RNN) and Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) Networkcited by 415
  16. 2023Jailbreak and Guard Aligned Language Models with Only Few In-Context Demonstrationscited by 401
  17. 2022The Vendi Score: A Diversity Evaluation Metric for Machine Learningcited by 299
  18. 2023Large Language Models as Tool Makerscited by 293
  19. 2023Google USM: Scaling Automatic Speech Recognition Beyond 100 Languagescited by 228
  20. 2021Generated Knowledge Prompting for Commonsense Reasoningcited by 213
  21. 2023GPT4Graph: Can Large Language Models Understand Graph Structured Data ? An Empirical Evaluation and Benchmarkingcited by 209
  22. 2023ART: Automatic multi-step reasoning and tool-use for large language modelscited by 193
  23. 2023LLM Lies: Hallucinations are not Bugs, but Features as Adversarial Examplescited by 177
  24. 2023RoCo: Dialectic Multi-Robot Collaboration with Large Language Modelscited by 171
  25. 2023LLM in a flash: Efficient Large Language Model Inference with Limited Memorycited by 170
  26. 2023Active Prompting with Chain-of-Thought for Large Language Modelscited by 154
  27. 2024EASYTOOL: Enhancing LLM-based Agents with Concise Tool Instructioncited by 153
  28. 2023Prompting Large Language Models with Speech Recognition Abilitiescited by 139
  29. 2023Translating Natural Language to Planning Goals with Large-Language Modelscited by 132
  30. 2023Emergent autonomous scientific research capabilities of large language modelscited by 127
  31. 2023Chatlaw: A Multi-Agent Legal Assistant based on a Role-Aligned Mixture-of-Experts Architecturecited by 119
  32. 2022Large Language Models are Few-shot Testers: Exploring LLM-based General Bug Reproductioncited by 110
  33. 2023Evil Geniuses: Delving into the Safety of LLM-based Agentscited by 103
  34. 2023Guiding Large Language Models via Directional Stimulus Promptingcited by 94
  35. 2023Review of Large Vision Models and Visual Prompt Engineeringcited by 77
  36. 2023Mitigating Large Language Model Hallucinations via Autonomous Knowledge Graph-based Retrofittingcited by 70
  37. 2023Turning large language models into cognitive modelscited by 66
  38. 2023RET-LLM: Towards a General Read-Write Memory for Large Language Modelscited by 64

50 most cited of 72 All 72 (JSON)

Built on by

Cited by year (2026 to 7 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2024: 7; 2025: 16; 2026: 7.

30 papers.

Sort:

By area:

  1. 2024Large Language Model-Based Agents for Software Engineering: A Surveycited by 173
  2. 2025AI Agents vs. Agentic AI: A Conceptual Taxonomy, Applications and Challengescited by 167
  3. 2025A Survey of Context Engineering for Large Language Modelscited by 120
  4. 2024CoD, Towards an Interpretable Medical Agent using Chain of Diagnosiscited by 43
  5. 2025Vibe Coding vs. Agentic Coding: Fundamentals and Practical Implications of Agentic AIcited by 39
  6. 2025Evolution of AI in Education: Agentic Workflowscited by 13
  7. 2025Toward a Human-Centered Evaluation Framework for Trustworthy LLM-Powered GUI Agentscited by 11
  8. 2024CheckEmbed: Effective Verification of LLM Solutions to Open-Ended Taskscited by 10
  9. 2025CXXCrafter: An LLM-Based Agent for Automated C/C++ Open Source Software Buildingcited by 10
  10. 2026GEAR: Granularity-Adaptive Advantage Reweighting for LLM Agents via Self-Distillationcited by 10
  11. 2025Anomaly Detection and Generation with Diffusion Models: A Surveycited by 8
  12. 2024SurgBox: Agent-Driven Operating Room Sandbox with Surgery Copilotcited by 6
18 more
  1. 2025Assessing and Enhancing the Robustness of LLM-based Multi-Agent Systems Through Chaos Engineeringcited by 6
  2. 2026Gated Differentiable Working Memory for Long-Context Language Modelingcited by 6
  3. 2024CURATe: Benchmarking Personalised Alignment of Conversational AI Assistantscited by 5
  4. 2025Agent Identity Evals: Measuring Agentic Identitycited by 5
  5. 2025Guardians of the Agentic System: Preventing Many Shots Jailbreak with Agentic Systemcited by 4
  6. 2025Cognitive Agents Powered by Large Language Models for Agile Software Project Managementcited by 4
  7. 2024Revolutionizing Bridge Operation and Maintenance with LLM-based Agents: An Overview of Applications and Insightscited by 3
  8. 2025Interaction-Driven Browsing: A Human-in-the-Loop Conceptual Framework Informed by Human Web Browsing for Browser-Using Agentscited by 3
  9. 2025Fine-Tuning LLMs for Low-Resource Dialect Translation: The Case of Lebanesecited by 2
  10. 2025Graph-Enhanced Policy Optimization in LLM Agent Trainingcited by 2
  11. 2025The Moral Consistency Pipeline: Continuous Ethical Evaluation for Large Language Modelscited by 2
  12. 2024PyGen: A Collaborative Human-AI Approach to Python Package Creationcited by 1
  13. 2025MediaMind: Revolutionizing Media Monitoring using Agentificationcited by 0
  14. 2026Autonoma: A Hierarchical Multi-Agent Framework for End-to-End Workflow Automationcited by 0
  15. 2026IntentWeave: A Progressive Entry Ladder for Multi-Surface Browser Agents in Cloud Portalscited by 0
  16. 2026GraphBit: A Graph-based Agentic Framework for Non-Linear Agent Orchestrationcited by 0
  17. 2026PseudoBench: Measuring How Agentic Auto-Research Fuels Pseudosciencecited by 0
  18. 2026On Understanding, Identifying, and Mitigating Vulnerabilities in Agentic Large Language Modelscited by 0

Similar, not cited

Close in wording, no citation either way

  1. 2025From Language to Action: A Review of Large Language Models as Autonomous Agents and Tool Users
  2. 2025Large Language Models for Agent-Based Modelling: Current and possible uses across the modelling cycle
  3. 2025LLM-Powered AI Agent Systems and Their Applications in Industry
  4. 2024Large Multimodal Agents: A Survey
  5. 2025Agentic Large Language Models, a survey
  6. 2025LLM-Based Human-Agent Collaboration and Interaction Systems: A Survey
  7. 2025Large Language Model Agent: A Survey on Methodology, Applications and Challenges
  8. 2025Fundamentals of Building Autonomous LLM Agents