Scribd
Upload
38 views7 pages

2b Agents Short Notes

Uploaded by

ceyikep910
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
38 views7 pages

2b Agents Short Notes

Uploaded by

ceyikep910
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 7

AGENTS

Artificial intelligence is defined as the study of rational agents. A rational agent


could be anything that makes decisions, as a person, firm, machine, or
software. It carries out an action with the best outcome after considering past
and current percepts(agent’s perceptual inputs at a given instance). An AI
system is composed of an agent and its environment. The agents act in their
environment. The environment may contain other agents.
An agent is anything that can be viewed as :
 perceiving its environment through sensors and
 acting upon that environment through actuators
Note: Every agent can perceive its own actions (but not always the effects)

To understand the structure of Intelligent Agents, we should be familiar


with Architecture and Agent programs. Architecture is the machinery that the
agent executes on. It is a device with sensors and actuators, for example, a
robotic car, a camera, a PC. Agent program is an implementation of an agent
function. An agent function is a map from the percept sequence(history of all
that an agent has perceived to date) to an action.

Agent = Architecture + Agent Program


Examples of Agent:
 A software agent has Keystrokes, file contents, received network packages
which act as sensors and displays on the screen, files, sent network packets
acting as actuators.
 A Human-agent has eyes, ears, and other organs which act as sensors, and
hands, legs, mouth, and other body parts acting as actuators.
 A Robotic agent has Cameras and infrared range finders which act as
sensors and various motors acting as actuators.

Types of Agents
Agents can be grouped into five classes based on their degree of perceived
intelligence and capability :
 Simple Reflex Agents
 Model-Based Reflex Agents
 Goal-Based Agents
 Utility-Based Agents
 Learning Agent

Simple reflex agents


Simple reflex agents ignore the rest of the percept history and act only on the
basis of the current percept. Percept history is the history of all that an agent
has perceived to date. The agent function is based on the condition-action
rule. A condition-action rule is a rule that maps a state i.e, condition to an
action. If the condition is true, then the action is taken, else not. This agent
function only succeeds when the environment is fully observable. For simple
reflex agents operating in partially observable environments, infinite loops are
often unavoidable. It may be possible to escape from infinite loops if the agent
can randomize its actions.

Problems with Simple reflex agents are :


 Very limited intelligence.
 No knowledge of non-perceptual parts of the state.
 Usually too big to generate and store.
 If there occurs any change in the environment, then the collection of rules
need to be updated.

Model-based reflex agents


It works by finding a rule whose condition matches the current situation. A
model-based agent can handle partially observable environments by the use
of a model about the world. The agent has to keep track of the internal
state which is adjusted by each percept and that depends on the percept
history. The current state is stored inside the agent which maintains some kind
of structure describing the part of the world which cannot be seen.

Updating the state requires information about :


 how the world evolves independently from the agent, and
 how the agent’s actions affect the world.

Goal-based agents

These kinds of agents take decisions based on how far they are currently from
their goal(description of desirable situations). Their every action is intended to
reduce its distance from the goal. This allows the agent a way to choose among
multiple possibilities, selecting the one which reaches a goal state. The
knowledge that supports its decisions is represented explicitly and can be
modified, which makes these agents more flexible. They usually require search
and planning. The goal-based agent’s behavior can easily be changed.

Utility-based agents

The agents which are developed having their end uses as building blocks are
called utility-based agents. When there are multiple possible alternatives, then
to decide which one is best, utility-based agents are used. They choose actions
based on a preference (utility) for each state. Sometimes achieving the
desired goal is not enough. We may look for a quicker, safer, cheaper trip to
reach a destination. Agent happiness should be taken into consideration. Utility
describes how “happy” the agent is. Because of the uncertainty in the world, a
utility agent chooses the action that maximizes the expected utility. A utility
function maps a state onto a real number which describes the associated
degree of happiness.

Learning Agent :
A learning agent in AI is the type of agent that can learn from its past
experiences or it has learning capabilities. It starts to act with basic knowledge
and then is able to act and adapt automatically through learning.
A learning agent has mainly four conceptual components, which are:
1. Learning element: It is responsible for making improvements by learning
from the environment
2. Critic: The learning element takes feedback from critics which describes
how well the agent is doing with respect to a fixed performance standard.
3. Performance element: It is responsible for selecting external action
4. Problem Generator: This component is responsible for suggesting actions
that will lead to new and informative experiences.

You might also like