What is an agent

The literature on philosophy, cybernetics and AI is littered with debates on what does it mean to call something an agent. They are all very interesting, but for all practical purposes there’s a simple pragmatic concept that is worth adopting.

Russel-Norvig agents

The canonical AI textbook Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach by Russel and Norvig gives a simple practical definition of agents:

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

Note how the wording “viewed as” shifts focus away from metaphysics of action, and towards the researcher’s own interpretation of reality. As we learned, “all