Intelligent Agent Technology and Application

Course overview and what is intelligent agent

Intelligent Agent Technology and Application, 2006, Ai Lab NJU

What is intelligent agent

Field that inspired the agent fields? Artificial Intelligence

Agent intelligence and micro-agent Agent as an abstracted entity Agent architecture, MAS, Coordination Agent Negotiation

Software Engineering

Distributed System and Computer Network

Game Theory and Economics

?
Agent
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There are two kinds definition of agent Often quite narrow Extremely general

Gao Yang, Ai Lab NJU

General definitions

American Heritage Dictionary

... One that acts or has the power or authority to act ... or represent another

Russel and Norvig

An agent is anything that can be viewed as perceiving its environment through sensors and acting upon that environment through effectors.

Maes, Parrie

Autonomous agents are computational systems that inhabit some complex dynamic environment, sense and act autonomously in this environment, and by doing so realize a set of goals or tasks for which they are designed.
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Agent: more specific definitions

Smith, Cypher and Spohrer

Let us define an agent as a persistent software entity dedicated to a specific purpose. Persistent distinguishes agents from subroutines; agents have their own ideas about how to accomplish tasks, their own agendas. Special purpose distinguishes them from multifunction applications; agents are typically much smaller. Intelligent Agents continuously perform three functions: perception of dynamic conditions in the environment; action to affect conditions in the environment; and reasoning to interpret perceptions, solve problems, draw inferences, and determine actions.
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Hayes-Roth

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Agent: industrial definitions

IBM

Intelligent agents are software entities that carry out some set of operations on behalf of a user or another program with some degree of independence or autonomy, and in doing so, employ some knowledge or representations of the users goals or desires

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Agent: weak notions

Wooldridge and Jennings

An Agent is a piece of hardware or (more commonly) softwarebased computer system that enjoys the following properties

Autonomy: agents operate without the direct intervention of humans or others, and have some kind of control over their actions and internal state;

Pro-activeness: agents do not simply act in response to their environment, they are able to exhibit goal-directed behavior by taking the initiative.
Reactivity: agents perceive their environment and respond to it in timely fashion to changes that occur in it. Social Ability: agents interact with other agents (and possibly humans) via some kind of agent-communication language.

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Sept. 2006

Agent: strong notions

Wooldridge and Jennings

Weak notion in addition to

Mobility: the ability of an agent to move around a network Veracity: agent will not knowingly communicate false information Benevolence: agents do not have conflicting goals and always try to do what is asked of it. Rationality: an agent will act in order to achieve its goals and will not act in such a way as to prevent its goals being achieved

Gao Yang, Ai Lab NJU

Sept. 2006

Summary of agent definitions

An agent act on behalf user or another entity.

An agent has the weak agent characteristics. (Autonomy, Pro-

activeness, Reactivity, Social ability)

An agent may have the strong agent characteristics. (Mobility,

Veracity, Benevolence, Rationality)

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Dear child gets many names

Many synonyms of the term Intelligent agent

Robots Software agent or softbots Knowbots

Taskbots
Userbots

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Autonomy is the key feature of agent

Examples

Thermostat

Control / Regulator Any control system

Sensor Input

Agent Action Input

Software Daemon

Print server

Http server
Environment

Most software daemons

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Type of environment

An agent will not have complete control over its environment, but have partial control, in that it can influence it.

Scientific computing or MIS in traditonal computing.

Classification of environment properties [Russell 1995, p49]

Accessible vs. inaccessible Deterministic vs. non-deterministic Episodic vs. non-episodic Static vs. dynamic Discrete vs. continuous

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Accessible vs. inaccessible

Accessible vs. inaccessible

An accessible environment is one in which the agent can obtain complete, accurate, up-to-date information about the environments state. (also complete observable vs. partial observable) Accessible: sensor give complete state of the environment. In an accessible environment, agent neednt keep track of the world through its internal state.

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Deterministic vs. non-deterministic

Deterministic vs. non-deterministic

A deterministic environment is one in which any action has a single guaranteed effect , there is no uncertainty about the state that will result from performing an action. That is, next state of the environment is completely determined by the current state and the action select by the agent.

Non-deterministic: a probabilistic model could be available.

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Episodic vs. non-episodic

Episodic vs. non-episodic

In an episodic environment, the performance of an agent is dependent on a number of discrete episodes, with no link between the performance of an agent in different scenarios. It need not reason about the interaction between this and future episodes. (such as a game of chess) In an episodic environment, agent doesnt need to remember the past, and doesnt have to think the next episodic ahead.
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Static vs. dynamic

Static vs. dynamic

A static environment is one that can assumed to remain unchanged expect by the performance of actions by the agents.

A dynamic environment is one that has other

processes operating on it which hence changes in ways beyond the agents control.

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Discrete vs. continuous

Discrete vs. continuous An environment is discrete if there are a fixed, finite number of actions and percepts in it.

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Why classify environments

The type of environment largely determines the design of agent. Classifying environment can help guide the agents design process (like system analysis in software engineering). Most complex general class of environments

Are inaccessible, non-deterministic, non-episodic, dynamic, and continuous.

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Discuss about environment: Gripper

Gripper is a standard example for probabilistic

planning model

Robot has three possible actions: paint (P), dry (W) and pickup (U)

State has four binary features: block painted, gripper dry, holding block, gripper clean

Initial state:
Goal state:
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Intelligent agent vs. agent

An intelligent agent is one that is capable of flexible autonomous action in order to meet its design objectives, where flexibility means three things:

Pro-activeness: the ability of exhibit goal-directed behavior by taking the initiative. Reactivity: the ability of percept the environment, and respond in a timely fashion to changes that occur in it.

Social ability: the ability of interaction with other agents (include human).
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Pro-activeness

Pro-activeness

In functional system, apply pre-condition and postcondition to realize goal directed behavior. But for non-functional system (dynamic system), goal must remain valid at least until the action complete. agent blindly executing a procedure without regard to whether the assumptions underpinning the procedure are valid is a poor strategy.

Observe incompletely

Environment is non-deterministic
Other agent can affect the environment

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Reactivity

Reactivity

Agent must be responsive to events that occur in its environment. Building a system that achieves an effective balance between goal-directed and reactive behavior is hard.

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Social ability

Social ability Must negotiate and cooperate with others.

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Agent vs. object

Object

Are defined as computational entities that encapsulate some state, are able to perform actions, or methods on this state, and communicate by message passing.

Are computational entities. Encapsulate some internal state. Are able to perform actions, or methods, to change this state. Communicate by message passing.

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Agent and object

Differences between agent and object

An object can be thought of as exhibiting autonomy over its state: it has control over it. But an object does not exhibit control over its behavior. Other objects invoke their public method. Agent can only request other agents to perform actions. Objects do it for free, agents do it for money. (implement agents using object-oriented technology)Thinking it.
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Agent and object

In standard object model has nothing whatsoever to say about how to build systems that integrate reactive, pro-active, social behavior. Each has their own thread of control. In the standard object model, there is a single thread of control in the system. (agent is similar with an active object.) Summary,

Agent embody stronger notion of autonomy than object Agent are capable of flexible behavior Multi-agent system is inherently multi-threaded
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Agent and expert system

Expert system

Is one that is capable of solving problems or giving advice in some knowledge-rich domain. Expert system is disembodied, rather than being situated. It do not interact with any environment. Give feedback or advice to a third part. Are not required to interact with other agents.

The most important distinction

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Example of agents

Mobile Customer Agent (Peer) Agent (Peer)

Mobile Customer

Mobile Customer

Agent (Peer)

Agent (Peer)

Mobile Customer

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Distributed Artificial Intelligence (DAI)

DAI is a sub-field of AI DAI is concerned with problem solving where agents solve (sub-) tasks (macro level) Main area of DAI

Distributed problem solving (DPS)

Centralized Control and Distributed Data (Massively Parallel Processing)

Multi-agent system (MAS)

Distributed Control and Distributed Data (coordination crucial)

Some histories

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DAI is concerned with

Agent granularity (agent size) Heterogeneity agent (agent type) Methods of distributing control (among agents) Communication possibilities
Distributed AI

MAS Distributed Coarse agent granularity Computing And high-level communication

Distributed Problem Solving

Artificial Intelligence

Multi-Agent Systems

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DAI is not concerned with

Issues of coordination of concurrent processes at the problem solving and representational level. Parallel computer architecture, parallel programming languages or distributed operation system. No semaphores, monitors or threads etc. Higher semantics of communication (speech-act level)

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Motivation behind MAS

To solve problems too large for a centralized agent

E.g. Financial system

To allow interconnection and interoperation of multiple legacy system

E.g. Web crawling

To provide a solution to inherently distributed system To provide a solution where expertise is distributed To provide conceptual clarity and simplicity of design
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Benefits of MAS

Faster problem solving

Decreasing communication

Higher semantics of communication (speech-act level)

Flexibility Increasing reliability

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Heterogeneity degrees in MAS

Low

Identical agents, different resources

Medium

Different agent expertise

High

Share only interaction protocol (e.g. FIPA or

KQML)

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Cooperative and self-interested MAS

Cooperative

Agents designed by interdependent designers Agents act for increased good of the system (i.e. MAS) Concerned with increasing the systems performance and not the individual agents

Self-interested

Agents designed by independent designer Agents have their own agenda and motivation Concerned with the benefit of each agent (individualistic) The latter more realistic in an Internet-setting?
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Our categories about MAS

Cooperation

Both has a common object Each have different objects which are contradictory. Each have different objects which are conflictive, but the total system has one explicit (or implicit) object

Competitive

Semi-competitive

The first now is known as TEAMWORK.

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Distributed AI perspectives
Distributed AI

Perspectives
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Planning

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Our Thinking in MAS

Single benefit vs. collective benefit

No need central control

Social intelligence vs. single intelligence Self-organize system

Self-form, self-evolve

Intelligence is emergence, not innative

..

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Conclusions of lecture

Agent has general definition, weak definition and strong definition

Classification of the environment Differences between agent and intelligent agent,

agent and object, agent and expert system

Multi-agent system is macro issues of agent systems

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Coursework

1. Give other examples of agents (not necessarily intelligent) that you know of. For each, define as precisely as possible: (a). the environment that the agent occupies, the states that this environment can be in, and the type of environment. (b). The action repertoire available to the agent, and any pre-conditions associated with these actions; (c). The goal, or design objectives of the agent what it is intended to achieve.

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Coursework

2. If a traffic light (together with its control system) is considered as intelligent agent, which of agents properties should be employ? Illustrate your answer by examples.

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Coursework

3. Please determine the environments type.

Chess Accessible?? Deterministic ?? Episodic?? Static?? Discrete?? Poker Minesweeper Eshopping

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