Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Intelligent Agents
Acting Rationally
Act so that desired goals are achieved
The rational agent approach (this is what we’ll focus on in this course)
Figure out how to make correct decisions, which sometimes means thinking rationally
and other times means having rational reflexes
correct inference versus rationality
reasoning versus acting; limited rationality
“I propose to consider the question, ‘Can machines think?’ This should begin with
definitions of the meaning of the terms ‘machine’ and ‘think’. The definitions might
be framed so as to reflect so far as possible the normal use of the words, but this
attitude is dangerous. If the meaning of the words ‘machine’ and ‘think’ are to be
found by examining how they are commonly used it is difficult to escape the
conclusion that the meaning and the answer to the question, ‘Can machines think?’ is
to be sought in a statistical survey such as a Gallup poll. But this is absurd. Instead of
attempting such a definition I shall replace the question by another, which is closely
related to it and is expressed in relatively unambiguous words.”
exponential
Polynomial vs. exponential time complexity
Here, now
Time
15*109 light-
years
Big bang
Storage Capacity of the Universe
Total storage capacity: 10184 bits < 10200 bits < 2670 bits
Non-monotonic Reasoning
Truth maintenance systems
actuators
PEAS Analysis:
Specify Performance Measure, Environment, Actuators, Sensors
Performance measure??
Environment??
Actuators??
Sensors??
function
functionSkeleton-Agent(percept)
Skeleton-Agent(percept)returns
returnsaction
action
static: memory, the agent's memory of the world
static: memory, the agent's memory of the world
memory←
memory ←Update-Memory(memory,
Update-Memory(memory,percept)
percept)
action←
action ←Choose-Best-Action(memory)
Choose-Best-Action(memory)
memory ←
memory ←Update-Memory(memory,
Update-Memory(memory,action)
action)
return action
return action
Observations:
agent may or may not build percept sequence in memory (depends on domain)
performance measure is not part of the agent; it is applied externally to judge the
success of the agent
Utility Function
a mapping of states onto real numbers
allows rational decisions in two kinds of situations
evaluation of the tradeoffs among conflicting goals
evaluation of competing goals
Examples
quicker, safer, more reliable ways to get where going;
price comparison shopping
bidding on items in an auction
evaluating bids in an auction
Also (for discussion) look at exercise 1.2 and read the material on the Turing
Test at:
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/turing-test/