Definition
Plain language
An AI that answers a question by searching, reading, and searching again over many steps, instead of replying in one shot.
As stated in the literature
An agent that runs a multi-step search-read-decide loop to assemble an answer, often fusing private internal documents with open-web retrieval; the setting in which query-trail privacy leakage is studied.
Also called: deep research agents
Why it matters: Its step-by-step searching lets it answer hard questions a single reply can't, but those very search queries can accidentally expose private information.
For example, asked who supplies a company's main competitor, it searches the web, reads a few results, refines its query, and searches again before answering.
Heard on the show
“When people say "deep research agent," they don't quite mean what most listeners picture when they hear "AI search.”Episode 082 — Training a Deep Research Agent on 8,000 Synthetic Tasks: The Rubric Tree Trick