agents

Terms from Artificial Intelligence: humans at the heart of algorithms

Page numbers are for draft copy at present; they will be replaced with correct numbers when final book is formatted. Chapter numbers are correct and will not change now.

An agent is a computational entity that has some level of independence or autonomoy. Agents may be used behind the scenes, for example in robotic process automation or interact directly with humans in a user interface agents. Agents may act individually, but cooperating agents can communicate with one another, typically using messages leading to more complex behaviours.

Cooperating agents can also be applied at a low-level as part of swarm computing or to simulate human crowds or flocks of birds.

Used in Chap. 11: page 167; Chap. 15: page 239; Chap. 16: pages 255, 267, 268

Also known as software agents