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AI agents and task environments

Here you will be introduced to the task environment and the different types of agents as well as what an AI agent is.
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Hello, everyone, in this video, I will explain about environment and agent. We have already explained in the previous video what AI agent is. As a reminder, we have an agent, which perceives its environment through sensors and acts upon that environment through actuators or actors. And inside that agent, there are some kind of processors.
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In human agent, the eyes, ears, nose are the sensors and the hands ,mouth are the actors or actuators, while the processor will be our brain. In a robotic agent, the eyes replaced by a camera and the motors are the different actuators. The agent also could be a software like agent in computer games, and the sensor could be just clicks or receiving a data package and acting maybe by display something on monitor or sending a data package. The rational agent is the agent that does the right things or act to achieve maximum performance.
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When thinking about building an intelligent agent, we must consider and specify the task environment. After talking about AI agent, now, we will talk about environments. Environments is everything in the world which surrounds the agent. It could be a physical world / a real world or a virtual one. So the environment is where the agent operates.
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The task environment comprised of: performance, environment , actuators/ actors and sensors.
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And the first step in designing an agent, we must specify the task environment.
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Let’s take an example to clarify that. What is the task environment for such a problem? An automated taxi driver? Feel free to pause the video. I think a little bit about that. The PEAS description for the taxi task environment
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is: in the performance, we want the automated taxi driver to go to the correct destination, minimizing trip time or cost and maximizing the profits. We ask ourselves, what is the environment that the taxi driver will face? He must deal with roads, traffics , cars, and so on. The actors for our agent could be steering wheels, brakes, display screen. Finally, the sensor could includes camera to see the road, GPS, a keyboard and speedometer.

The system which perceives the environment and acts accounted as an agent​.

The video introduces different agent types such as:

  • Software agent​
  • Robotic agent​
  • Human agent​

Then we will go through the rational agent, the agent that always chooses the actions which maximises the performance measure (to be most successful), given a percept sequence​ behaviour.

Finally, we cover the “task environment” for an agent.

The first step in designing an AI agent is to specify the task environment. The task environment is comprised of PEAS (Performance measure, Environment, Actuators, Sensors)​.

Discussion:

Reflect upon your understanding of the following:

  • What is an agent?​
  • When is an agent intelligent?​
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An Introduction to Artificial Intelligence in the Tourism Industry

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