I think it's better to imagine agent as something that physically placed inside the Environment, and actually modifying/changing/mutating it in place.
> An email filter is an agent. A database trigger is an agent.
you're missing the "I" (Intelligence) part - the filtering logic in the email filter, or a business logic in the DB trigger/stored procedure/CGI script/AWS Lambda function/etc.
But yes, an agent doesn't have to be Intelligent, it can be a Dumb Agent / NPC / Zero-Intelligence Trader.
Can you explain the "intelligence" part? Can't one derive a decision tree of any "intelligent agent" that is in essence no different than a classically programmed algorithm?
Yes, for Computational Agents you will either code "Agent Intelligence"/"Agent Cognition" algorithmically, or using AI/ML/LLM (either by pre-training, or using continous re-training for Adaptive Agents).
Useful abstaractions:
- FSM/State Machines
- Behavior Trees
- Behavior Action Trees
- Workflow Orchestration
- Dataflow (mostly for pipelines transforming LLM Prompt into LLM Reponse)
Another option is to outsource it to a Human, like it was in the ALICE program[1], e.g. Human-in-the-Loop, Participatory Simulation, RLHF, Whole-brain computer simulation, like in The Age of Em[2] (SciFi).
I think it's better to imagine agent as something that physically placed inside the Environment, and actually modifying/changing/mutating it in place.
> An email filter is an agent. A database trigger is an agent.
you're missing the "I" (Intelligence) part - the filtering logic in the email filter, or a business logic in the DB trigger/stored procedure/CGI script/AWS Lambda function/etc.
But yes, an agent doesn't have to be Intelligent, it can be a Dumb Agent / NPC / Zero-Intelligence Trader.