AI Agents

- Overview

AI agent, short for artificial intelligence agent, refers to an entity embedded in a computer system that simulates human-like intelligence to perform specific tasks. These agents use algorithms, data, and predefined rules to analyze information, make decisions, and perform actions. 

The overall goal is to replicate human cognitive processes and problem-solving abilities, enabling machines to perform tasks autonomously and adapt to changing environments.

Here are some characteristics of AI agents:

• Autonomy: AI agents can operate without constant human intervention.
• Reactivity: AI agents can perceive their environment and respond to changes in a timely manner.
• Proactivity: AI agents can take initiative and perform tasks to achieve their objectives.
• Social ability: AI agents can communicate with other agents or humans when necessary.

Here are some types of agents: 

• Human agents: Use their senses to perceive their environment and use their limbs and voice to effect changes in the world. Sensory organs include eyes, ears, nose, tongue, and skin, and effector organs include hands, legs, and mouth.
• Robotic agents: Autonomous machines designed to perform tasks in an environment. They have various types of sensors to collect data from their surroundings, such as cameras and infrared range finders.
• Learning agents: Can learn from their past experiences or have learning capabilities. They start to act with basic knowledge and then are able to act and adapt automatically through learning.
• Software agents: Have encoded bit strings as their percepts and actions.
• Generic agents: Have a general structure of an agent who interacts with the environment.

- The Four Rules of AI Agents

An AI agent is anything that can be seen as perceiving its environment through sensors and acting upon it through actuators. It will run in cycles of perceiving, thinking and acting. Agents include humans, robots, softbots, thermostats, etc.

Here are the main four rules that all AI agents must abide by:

• Rule 1: AI agents must be able to perceive their environment.
• Rule 2: Environmental observations must be used to make decisions.
• Rule 3: Decisions should lead to actions.
• Rule 4: Actions taken by AI agents must be rational. Rational action is action that maximizes performance and produces the best positive outcome.

AI agent continuously performs these functions:

• Perceiving dynamic conditions in the environment
• Acting to affect conditions in the environment
• Using reasoning to interpret perceptions
• Problem-solving
• Drawing inferences
• Determining actions and their outcomes

- Intelligent Assistance

Intelligent assistance (IA) refers to the use of intelligent agents to help individuals perform tasks or services. While intelligent agents may look like any other software application that accomplishes a set of coordinated functions, tasks, or activities, they can actually do one or more of the following:

• Work autonomously 
• Meet Goals
• Maintain historical data 
• Perceive and assist

AI machines imitate humans, while IA (intelligent Assistance) machines assist humans. Due to the breadth of research involving both techniques, it is easy to confuse the two. 

AI (Artificial intelligence) is the practice or study of intelligent agents and determining the limits of their intelligence. IA (Intelligent Assistance) is the use of intelligent agents to serve humans, which means that such agents exist within predefined parameters. 

Their intelligence is measured by many factors, including but not limited to: Problem solving, learning, language processing.

- Intelligent Agents

In AI, an intelligent agent perceives its environment via sensors and acts rationally upon that environment with its effectors. 

The Properties of an Intelligent Agent: autonomous, reactive to the environment, pro-active (goal-directed), and interacts with other agents via the environment. 

An Intelligent agent (or rational agent) is an agent which acts in a way that is expected to maximize to its performance measure, given the evidence provided by what it perceived and whatever built-in knowledge it has. The performance measure defines the criterion of success for an agent. The above properties of the intelligent agents are often grouped in the term PEAS, which stands for Performance, Environment, Actuators and Sensors.

An intelligent agent is a program that can make decisions or perform a service based on its environment, user input and experiences. These programs can be used to autonomously gather information on a regular, programmed schedule or when prompted by the user in real time. Intelligent agents may also be referred to as a bot, which is short for robot. 

The concept of intelligent agent is actually central in AI. AI aims to design intelligent agents that are useful, reactive, autonomous, and even social and pro-active.

An ideal agent always chooses the action which maximizes its expected performance, given its percept sequence so far. An autonomous agent uses its own experience rather than built-in knowledge of the environment by the designer.

- Rational Agents

In artificial intelligence (AI), a rational agent is a computer program that uses logical reasoning and decision-making to determine its next action. A rational agent is goal-based, assessing its environment and determining how each available action will affect it. The agent then chooses the action that will help it achieve its goal and be most successful. 

Rational agents are closely related to intelligent agents, which are autonomous software programs that display intelligence. Some examples of intelligent agents include: 

• Online assistants: Siri, Alexa, Google, and Cortana
• Autonomous driving: Cars, buses, trucks, and drones

A rational agent is different from an omniscient agent. An omniscient agent knows the outcome of its actions and can act accordingly, but perfection is impossible in reality.

- Three Forms of Intelligent Agent

AI-enabled agents gather input from the environment by using sensors such as cameras, microphones, or other sensing devices. The agent then performs some real-time computation on the input and provides the output using actuators like screens or speakers. These agents have capabilities such as real-time problem solving, error or success rate analysis, and information retrieval.

Intelligent Agent can come in any of the three forms, such as:-

• Human-Agent: A Human-Agent use Eyes, Nose, Tongue and other sensory organs as sensors to percept information from the environment and uses limbs and vocal-tract as actuators to perform an action based on the information. 
• Robotic Agent: Robotics Agent uses cameras and infrared radars as sensors to record information from the Environment and it uses reflex motors as actuators to deliver output back to the environment. 
• Software Agent: Software Agent use keypad strokes, audio commands as input sensors and display screen as actuators.

For Example, AI-based smart assistants like Siri, Alexa. They use voice sensors to receive a request from the user and search for the relevant information in secondary sources without human intervention and actuators like its voice or text module relay information to the environment.