Intelligent Agents

An Intelligent Agent must sense, must act, must be autonomous (to some extent),. It also

must be rational.

AI is about building rational agents. An agent is something that perceives and acts.

A rational agent always does the right thing.

1. What are the functionalities (goals)?

2. What are the components?

3. How do we build them?

Rationality

Perfect Rationality assumes that the rational agent knows all and will take the action that

maximizes her utility. Human beings do not satisfy this definition of rationality.

Rational Action is the action that maximizes the expected value of the performance

measure given the percept sequence to date.

However, a rational agent is not omniscient. It does not know the actual outcome of its

actions, and it may not know certain aspects of its environment. Therefore rationality must

take into account the limitations of the agent.

 The agent has too select the best action to the best of its knowledge depending on its percept sequence, its background knowledge and its feasible actions. An agent also has to deal with the expected outcome of the actions where the action effects are not deterministic.