Talk:Intelligent agent

As a definition of artificial intelligence

This section, which talks about defining artificial intelligence as the study of intelligent agents, mostly contains definitions of intelligent agents, plus a reference to one paper that defines AI this way.

I don't think this is a common definition for AI. A lot of systems of interest, e.g. computer vision systems or language models, are generally not considered agents. Additionally, the Advantages section is not really sourced, and I'm not sure it's a generally held view. MattF (talk) 20:05, 17 February 2023 (UTC)

@MattF: I agree that "one paper" would be far from reliable when it comes to the definition of AI. There are probably ten thousand such papers.

However, it's not one paper, it's the leading AI textbook, Russell and Norvig (2003). They wrote "the whole-agent view is now widely accepted in the field." (p. 50) Other textbooks written around that time also used the definition, and could be added as additional citations.

Having said that, I agree with you that it no longer seems relevant in 2023. There was a paradigm shift during the 90s and this "intelligent agent definition" was one way of formalizing the new paradigm. So, in 2003, this was still a big deal, but now, not so much.

(In my view, they key component of the shift was the adoption of formal "goals" / "objective functions" / "utility functions" / "policies". These mathematical measures were mostly unheard of in the 80s, but by the 2000s they were common. This is also part of the shift away from knowledge and reasoning and towards decision making and learning.)

Having said that, the section needs work:

• We need to update the source to Russell & Norvig 2021, and find out how far they've backed down from it or refined it.
• I would cut the two additional paragraphs, with the citations to individual papers or newspapers. I would cut them as "undue weight": they are just examples of the 10,000 papers I mentioned earlier.
• The philosophy section should be cut down to just what we find in R&N 2021. ---- CharlesTGillingham (talk) 01:04, 22 September 2023 (UTC)

Missing reference to Computer Science field

I find it really odd to see a whole page about intelligent agents and not one reference of the field behind its development, Computer Science. 2001:8A0:786B:F300:C94B:61EF:B3C6:C5EF (talk) 18:50, 7 November 2023 (UTC)

Modern meaning

Usually, in the public discourse, AI agents refer to a particularly autonomous type of AI that can achieve goals that require a series of steps. This is similar to the definition presented in the section "Alternative definitions and uses".

Should we cover more deeply this notion of agent in this article, or leave it for the article Autonomous agent? Alenoach (talk) 01:41, 24 September 2024 (UTC)