ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (A.I) AGENTS

Artificial intelligence (A.I) agents may be defined aptly as reasoning engines that can understand context, plan work flow, connect to external tools and data and execute actions to achieve a defined goal.

Broadly speaking artificial intelligence agents are autonomous software programs or entities designed to perceive their environment, make decisions and take appropriate actions to achieve specific goals within the environment they operate or within a programing framework.

Son an artificial intelligence agent can take intelligent actions without human supervision to act as a human worker for instance and perform a task on its own based and in compliance to a given set of rules.

There are several types of artificial intelligence agents and this includes; simple reflex agent, model based reflex agent, goal based agent, utility based agent and learning agent.

Simple reflex agent reacts to the current state of the environment, without considering future consequences.

Model based reflex agent maintains an internal model of the environment and uses it to make decisions.

Goal based agent has specific goals and uses planning and decision making to achieve them.

Utility based agent makes decision based on a utility function that measures the probability and the desirability of different outcomes.

Learning agents uses machine learning algorithms to learn from experience and improve on its overall performance.

The components of an artificial intelligence agent are; sensors, actuators, knowledge base, inference engine and a learning mechanism.

Sensors enables the artificial intelligence agent to perceive its environment and  gather necessary data and information.

Actuators respond to the artificial intelligence agents actions and prompts in the real world environment.

The inference engine uses the knowledge base to make decisions and draw conclusions about its operating environment.

The learning mechanism enables the artificial intelligence agent to learn from experience like a human and subsequently adapt to new or emergent situations.

The main advantages of using artificial intelligence agents is undoubtly the elimination  and the automation of boring and repetitive tasks and replacing them other more challenging and interesting work for the human worker. Artificial intelligence agents can perform even more better and around the clock at these tasks better than humans without showing signs of fatigue. For instance, they can frequently monitor the process at all times and analyze vast amounts of data, identifying patterns and make informed decision. In addition artificial intelligence agents can handle vast amount of data and learn about users preferences and provide customized solutions to meet individual human needs.

The obvious disadvantages of artificial intelligence agents is its lack of human supervision and judgement especially when decision are critical and require human reasoning to prevail, since they are not exposed to extended training on human experience, emotions and morality. Also the data they act on or they are trained with may be defective giving rise to questionable outcomes. Artificial intelligence agents can be vulnerable to cyber-attacks and data breeches rendering them useless or ineffective.

Artificial intelligence agents find applications in a wide range of industries; in customer service as virtual assistants like siri, alexa and Google assistant. Artificial intelligence agents are used in chat bots and customer service platforms to provide 24/7 support. Artificial intelligence agents are used in medical diagnosis, personalized medicine and patient care. Artificial intelligence agent are used in trading, risk management, portfolio optimization and other applications too numerous to mention.

The future of artificial intelligence agents may represent a paradigm shift on how humans interacts and how human organization will be run today and how humans will interact and human organizations will be run in the future. In fact artificial intelligence agents offers a seemly world run by virtual workers in al areas of human life and endeavor such as  engineering design, research and development, manufacturing and production , services, agriculture, marketing and sales, medicine and healthcare, government, military, art and culture and so on.

 

 

SOURCES:

• Artificial intelligence: foundations of computational agents by David L. Poole and Alan K. Mackworth.
• The little book of deep learning by Francoius Fleuret.
• Artificial general intelligence by Julian Togellius.
• Responsible artificial intelligence by Virginia Dignum.
• I engineering by Chip Hugen.