Introduction

Microsoft's AutoGen framework offers a powerful way to create conversational AI agents that can interact with each other and perform complex tasks. In this blog post, we'll explore how to create your first conversation between AutoGen agents, focusing on a simple interaction between a user proxy agent and an assistant agent.

Setting Up Your Environment

Before we dive into creating our agents, let's make sure we have everything set up:

1. Install AutoGen:

   pip install pyautogen
   

2. Import the necessary modules:

   import autogen

Creating the Agents

We'll create two agents for our conversation:

1. A user proxy agent: This agent will represent the human user.
2. An assistant agent: This agent will act as an AI assistant.

Here's how we can create these agents:

# Create a user proxy agent
user_proxy = autogen.UserProxyAgent(
    name="Human",
    human_input_mode="TERMINATE",
    max_consecutive_auto_reply=10,
    is_termination_msg=lambda x: x.get("content", "").rstrip().endswith("TERMINATE"),
    code_execution_config={"work_dir": "coding"},
)

# Create an assistant agent
assistant = autogen.AssistantAgent(
    name="AI_Assistant",
    llm_config={
        "temperature": 0,
        "request_timeout": 600,
        "seed": 42,
        "model": "gpt-3.5-turbo",
        "config_list": autogen.config_list_from_json(
            "OAI_CONFIG_LIST",
            filter_dict={
                "model": ["gpt-3.5-turbo", "gpt-4", "gpt-4-32k"],
            },
        ),
    },
)

Let's break down what's happening here:

• The UserProxyAgent represents the human user. We've set it to terminate the conversation when "TERMINATE" is entered.
• The AssistantAgent is our AI assistant. We've configured it with specific settings for the language model, including temperature, timeout, and model selection.

Initiating the Conversation

Now that we have our agents, let's start a conversation:

# Start the conversation
user_proxy.initiate_chat(
    assistant,
    message="Hello! Can you explain what AutoGen is in simple terms?",
)

This command initiates a chat between the user proxy and the assistant, starting with a question about AutoGen.

Running the Conversation

When you run this code, you'll see an output similar to this:

Human: Hello! Can you explain what AutoGen is in simple terms?

AI_Assistant: Certainly! I'd be happy to explain AutoGen in simple terms.

AutoGen is a framework developed by Microsoft for building AI-powered applications and systems. It's designed to make it easier for developers to create, manage, and deploy multiple AI agents that can work together to solve complex tasks.

Here are some key points about AutoGen:

1. Agent-based: AutoGen uses the concept of "agents," which are AI entities that can perform specific tasks or roles.

2. Conversational: These agents can communicate with each other and with humans, allowing for dynamic problem-solving and task completion.

3. Flexible: AutoGen supports various types of agents, including assistants, user proxies, and custom agents tailored to specific needs.

4. Easy to use: It provides a high-level interface that simplifies the process of creating and managing AI agents, making it accessible to developers with different levels of expertise.

5. Customizable: Developers can configure agents with different language models, settings, and capabilities to suit their specific requirements.

6. Task automation: AutoGen can be used to automate complex workflows by coordinating multiple agents to work on different aspects of a task.

7. Integration: It can be integrated with other tools and services, making it versatile for various applications.

In essence, AutoGen is like a toolkit that helps developers create AI systems where multiple AI "helpers" can work together, communicate, and solve problems, much like a team of people would collaborate on a project.

Is there anything specific about AutoGen you'd like me to elaborate on?