Robotic Process Automation (RPA)

tl;drRobotic process automation is software that mimics a person's clicks and keystrokes to carry out a repetitive task, copying a number from one system into another, logging into a portal, moving a file, according to a fixed set of rules.

RPA was an earlier generation of finance automation, and it's still useful for genuinely repetitive, unchanging tasks. Its limit is the moment a case falls outside the rule: a new field, a changed layout, an exception. RPA stops. AI agents pick up where RPA scripts break down, because they can reason about the exception instead of failing on it.