Agent

An intelligent agent refers to a computational entity that can function continuously and autonomously and possesses characteristics such as autonomy, responsiveness, sociality, initiative, and evolution. Any independent entity that can think and interact with the environment can be abstracted as an intelligent agent.

Agent Characteristics

The agent has the following basic characteristics:

1. Autonomy: The intelligent body can automatically adjust its behavior and state according to changes in the external environment, rather than just passively accepting external stimuli, and has the ability to self-manage and self-regulate.
2. Responsiveness: The ability to respond to external stimuli.
3. Proactivity: The ability of an intelligent body to take proactive actions in response to changes in the external environment.
4. Sociality: The intelligent agent has the ability to cooperate with other intelligent agents or people. Different intelligent agents can interact with other intelligent agents according to their own intentions to achieve the purpose of solving problems.
5. Evolvability: Agents can accumulate or learn from experience and knowledge, and modify their behavior to adapt to new environments.

The difference between agents and objects

Like objects, agents have identities, states, behaviors, and interfaces, but they differ from objects in the following ways:

1. Agents are intelligent and usually have their own knowledge base and reasoning engine, while objects are generally not intelligent;
2. Agents can autonomously decide whether to respond to information from other agents, while objects must act according to external requirements. In other words, agent systems can encapsulate behaviors, while objects can only encapsulate states, not behaviors, and the behavior of objects depends on the calls of external methods.
3. There is communication between agents, usually using a communication language that supports knowledge transfer.