Lec 2

CS321: Principles of Artificial Intelligence
Principles of Artificial
Intelligence
Course Code CS321
Faculty of Computing and Information Technology
Computer Science Department
Jan, 2022
These slides are based on lecture notes of the book’s author(Artificial
Intelligence: A Modern Approach,)
&
King Saud University course materials
&
Grokking Artificial Intelligence Algorithms
Lecturer:Wedad Al-Sorori
Intelligent Agents 2022 1/46
Intelligent Agents

Chapter Objectives
• At the end of this chapter, the student should be able to:
• Understand what an agent is and how an agent interacts with the
environment in a rational way.
• Identify the percepts available to the agent and the actions that the agent can
execute in a given problem situation.
• Understand the performance measures used to evaluate an agent
• Analyze a problem situation and identify the characteristics of the
environment.
• Discuss the different agent architectures and recommend the suitable
architecture of the desired agent.

Introduction
Thinking humanly Thinking rationally
Acting humanly Acting rationally

Agents and environments
• An agent is an entity that perceives and acts.
• An agent is anything that can be viewed as

• perceiving its environment through sensors and
• acting upon that environment through actuators
 Human agent:
 Sensors: eyes, ears, ...
 Actuators: hands, legs, mouth, …

Robotic agent:
 Sensors: cameras and infrared range finders
 Actuators: various motors

A software agent

receives file contents, network packets, and human input (keyboard/mouse/touchscreen/voice) as sensory inputs

and acts on the environment by writing files, sending network packets, and displaying information or generating sounds.



Abstractly, an agent is a function from percept histories to actions: [f : P*  A]
• An agent is specified by an agent function f that maps sequences of percepts Y to actions a from
a set A:
• Y={y0, y1, … , yt}
• A={a0, a1, … , ak}
●
The agent function is an abstract mathematical description
The agent program is a concrete implementation, running within some physical system( physical
architecture to produce f).
• agent = architecture + program
●
General assumption: every agent can perceive its own actions, but possibly not its effects

Agents and environments (4/5)
• Example:
• A vacuum-cleaner agent
• Percepts: location and contents, e.g., [A,Dirty]
• Actions: Left, Right, Suck, NoOp

• “Easy” solution: table that maps every possible sequence Y to an action a
• One small problem: exponential in length of Y

Rationality
• Definition
• The term rational should be used in a very specific technical way:
• Rational: maximally achieving pre-defined goals.
• Rationality only concerns what decisions are made (not the thought process
behind them).
• Goals are expressed in terms of the utility of outcomes.
• Being rational means maximizing your expected utility.
• Rational behavior: doing whatever is expected to

maximize goal achievement, given the available
information.

Rational Agents
An agent should strive to "do the right thing", based on what it can perceive
and the actions it can perform. The right action is the one that will cause the
agent to be most successful.
Performance measure: An objective criterion for success of an agent's

behavior.
• E.g.:
• performance measure of a vacuum-cleaner agent could be:
• amount of dirt cleaned up,
• amount of time taken,
• amount of electricity consumed,
• amount of noise generated, etc.

Rational Agent
• PAGE(Percepts, Actions, Goals, Environment)
• Must first specify the settings for intelligent agent design
• Without lose of generality “goals” specified by performance measure defining a
numerical value for any environment history
• Rational Agent: For each possible percept sequence, a

rational agent should select an action that is expected to
maximize its performance measure, given the evidence
provided by the percept sequence and whatever built-in
knowledge the agent has.

Rational Agent
• Rationality is distinct from omniscience (all-knowing with infinite
knowledge).
• Rationality is not omniscience
• Rationality is not clairvoyance
• Rationality is not (necessarily) successful!
• Agents can perform actions in order to modify future percepts so as to

obtain useful information.
• Information gathering : exploring an unknown environment
• Learning: finding out which action is likely to produce a desired outcome.
• An agent is autonomous if its behavior is determined by its own experience

(with ability to learn and adapt)
The Nature of Environments

• The environment could be everything—the entire universe! In practice it is just
that part of the universe whose state we care about when designing this agent—
the part that affects what the agent perceives and that is affected by the agent’s
actions
• For any given class of environments and tasks, we seek the agent (or class of
agents) with the best performance.
• To design a rational agent we need to specify a Task Environment

• a problem specification for which the agent is a solution
• PEAS: to specify a task environment

• Performance measure
• Environment
• Actuators
• Sensors
• Example Agent: Automated taxi driver.

• Performance measure:
• ?
• Environment:
• ?
• Actuators:
• ?
• Sensors:
• ?


• safe, fast, legal, comfortable, maximize profits
• Environment:
• ?
• Actuators:
• ?
• Sensors:
• ?


• Environment:
• roads, other traffic, pedestrians, customers
• Actuators:
• ?
• Sensors:
• ?


• Environment:
• Actuators:
• steering, accelerator, brake, signal, horn
• Sensors:
• ?


• Environment:
• Actuators:
• steering, accelerator, brake, signal, horn
• Sensors:
• cameras, sonar, speedometer, GPS


• Agent: Medical diagnosis system
• Healthy patient, minimize costs, lawsuits
• Environment:
• Patient, hospital, staff
• Actuators:
• Screen display (form including: questions, tests, diagnoses, treatments,
referrals)
• Sensors:
• Keyboard (entry of symptoms, findings, patient's answers)

• Agent: Part-picking robot
• Percentage of parts in correct bins
• Environment:
• Conveyor belt with parts, bins
• Actuators:
• Jointed arm and hand
• Sensors:
• Camera, joint angle sensors


• Agent: Interactive English tutor
• Maximize student's score on test
• Environment:
• Set of students
• Actuators:
• Screen display (exercises, suggestions, corrections)
• Sensors:
• Keyboard


• Properties of Task Environment:
• Fully observable (vs. partially observable): An agent's sensors give it access to the
complete state of the environment at each point in time.
• Deterministic (vs. stochastic): The next state of the environment is completely

determined by the current state and the action executed by the agent.
• (If the environment is deterministic except for the actions of other agents, then the environment
is strategic)
• Episodic (vs. sequential): The agent's experience is divided into atomic "episodes"
during which the agent perceives and then performs a single action, and the choice of
action in each episode depends only on the episode itself.

• Static (vs. dynamic): The environment is unchanged while an agent is
deliberating.
• The environment is semidynamic if the environment itself does not change with the
passage of time but the agent's performance score does.
• Discrete (vs. continuous): A limited number of distinct, clearly defined

percepts and actions.
• Single agent (vs. multiagent): An agent operating by itself in an environment.


 Detailed Examples for specifying the task environment properties:
Solitaire Backgammon Internet shopping Taxi

??Observable
??Deterministic
??Episodic
??Static
??Discrete
??Single-agent
AI 1
Intelligent Agents
24 2022 24/48
Fully vs. partially observable: an environment is full observable when the

sensors can detect all aspects that are relevant to the choice of action.

??Observable
??Deterministic
??Episodic
??Static
??Discrete
??Single-agent
AI 1
Intelligent
10 december 20 Agents
25 2022 25/48
22
Fully vs. partially observable: an environment is full observable when the

sensors can detect all aspects that are relevant to the choice of action.

??Observable FULL FULL PARTIAL PARTIAL
??Deterministic
??Episodic
??Static
??Discrete
??Single-agent
AI 1
Intelligent
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22
Deterministic vs. stochastic: if the next environment state is completely

determined by the current state the executed action then the environment is
deterministic.

??Deterministic
??Episodic
??Static
??Discrete
??Single-agent
AI 1
Intelligent
27 2022 27/48
22
Deterministic vs. stochastic: if the next environment state is completely

determined by the current state the executed action then the environment is
deterministic.

??Deterministic YES NO YES NO
??Episodic
??Static
??Discrete
??Single-agent
AI 1
Intelligent
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22
Episodic vs. sequential: In an episodic environment the agent’s experience

can be divided into atomic steps where the agents perceives and then performs
a single action. The choice of action depends only on the episode itself.
Solitaire Backgammom Intenet shopping Taxi

??Episodic
??Static
??Discrete
??Single-agent
AI 1
Intelligent
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22
Episodic vs. sequential: In an episodic environment the agent’s experience

can be divided into atomic steps where the agents perceives and then performs
A single action. The choice of action depends only on the episode itself

??Episodic NO NO NO NO
??Static
??Discrete
??Single-agent
AI 1
Intelligent
30 2022 30/48
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Static vs. dynamic: If the environment can change while the agent is choosing
an action, the environment is dynamic. Semi-dynamic if the agent’s performance
changes even when the environment remains the same.

??Static
??Discrete
??Single-agent
AI 1
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22
Static vs. dynamic: If the environment can change while the agent is choosing
an action, the environment is dynamic. Semi-dynamic if the agent’s performance
changes even when the environment remains the same.

??Static YES YES SEMI NO
??Discrete
??Single-agent
AI 1
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Discrete vs. continuous: This distinction can be applied to the state of the
environment, the way time is handled and to the percepts/actions of the agent.

??Discrete
??Single-agent
AI 1
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22
Discrete vs. continuous: This distinction can be applied to the state of the
environment, the way time is handled and to the percepts/actions of the agent.

??Discrete YES YES YES NO
??Single-agent
AI 1
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22
Single vs. multi-agent: Does the environment contain other agents who
are also maximizing some performance measure that depends on the
current agent’s actions?

??Single-agent
AI 1
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35 2022 35/48
22
Single vs. multi-agent: Does the environment contain other agents who
are also maximizing some performance measure that depends on the
current agent’s actions?

??Single-agent YES NO NO NO
AI 1
• The environment type largely determines the agent design.
• The simplest environment is

• Fully observable, deterministic, episodic, static, discrete and single-agent.
• Most real situations are:

• Partially observable, stochastic, sequential, dynamic, continuous and multi-agent.

The Structure of Agents

• The job of AI is to design the agent program that implements the
agent function mapping percepts to actions. Assuming this
program will run on some sort architecture of computing device
with physical sensors and actuators.
• Four basic kinds of agent program that embody the principles

underlying almost all intelligent systems:
• Simple reflex agents

• Model-based reflex agents
• Goal-based agents
• Utility-based agents

The Structure of Agents (2/6)

• Simple reflex agents
• characteristics
• no plan, no goal
• do not know what they want to
achieve
• do not know what they are doing
• condition-action rule
• If condition then action
• architecture function REFLEX_VACUUM_AGENT( percept )
returns an action
(location,status) = UPDATE_STATE( percept )
if status = DIRTY then return SUCK;
else if location = A then return RIGHT;
else if location = B then return LEFT;

• Model-based reflex agents New

• characteristics
• Reflex agent with internal state
• Sensor does not provide the complete state
of the world.
• must keep its internal state
• Updating the internal world
• requires two kinds of knowledge
• How world evolves
• How agent’s action affect the world
• architecture

 Goal-based agents
 Characteristics
 Action depends on the goal . (consideration of future)
 e.g. path finding
 fundamentally different from the condition-action rule.
 Search and Planning
New
 Solving “car-braking” problem?
 yes, possible, … but not likely natural.
 appears less efficient.
 architecture


 Utility-based agents
 Characteristics
 to generate high-quality behavior
 map the internal states to real
numbers.
(e.g., game playing) New
 Looking for higher utility value
 utility function
 architecture

 Learning agents
 architecture
Any other
agent!

AIMA Code
https://github.com/aimacode

Summary
• To conclude:
• An agent is something that perceives and acts in an environment.

• A task environment specification includes the performance measure, the external environment, the
actuators. and the sensors.
• Task environments vary along several significant dimensions. They can be fully or partially
observable, single-agent or multiagent, deterministic or stochastic, episodic or sequential, static or
dynamic, discrete or continuous, and known or unknown.
• There exists a variety of basic agent-program designs reflecting the kind of information made explicit
and used in the decision. They are: simple reflex agents, model-based reflex agents, goal-based
agents and utility-based agents.

THANKS

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CS321: Principles of Artificial Intelligence

Intelligent Agents 2022 2/46

Intelligent Agents 2022 3/48

Thinking humanly Thinking rationally

Acting humanly Acting rationally

Intelligent Agents 2022 4/48

Agents and environments

• An agent is an entity that perceives and acts.

• An agent is anything that can be viewed as

 Actuators: hands, legs, mouth, …

 Actuators: various motors

Intelligent Agents 2022 5/48

Agents and environments

• agent = architecture + program

Intelligent Agents 2022 6/48

Agents and environments (4/5)

Agents and environments

Intelligent Agents 2022 8/48

• Rational behavior: doing whatever is expected to

Intelligent Agents 2022 9/48

Performance measure: An objective criterion for success of an agent's

Intelligent Agents 2022 10/48

• Rational Agent: For each possible percept sequence, a

Intelligent Agents 2022 11/48

• Agents can perform actions in order to modify future percepts so as to

• An agent is autonomous if its behavior is determined by its own experience

The Nature of Environments

• To design a rational agent we need to specify a Task Environment

• PEAS: to specify a task environment

The Nature of Environments

• Example Agent: Automated taxi driver.

Intelligent Agents 2022 14/48

The Nature of Environments

• Example Agent: Automated taxi driver.

Intelligent Agents 2022 15/48

The Nature of Environments

• Example Agent: Automated taxi driver.

Intelligent Agents 2022 16/48

The Nature of Environments

• Example Agent: Automated taxi driver.

Intelligent Agents 2022 17/48

The Nature of Environments

• Example Agent: Automated taxi driver.

Intelligent Agents 2022 18/48

The Nature of Environments

The Nature of Environments

Intelligent Agents 2022 20/48

The Nature of Environments

Intelligent Agents 2022 21/48

The Nature of Environments

• Deterministic (vs. stochastic): The next state of the environment is completely

The Nature of Environments

• Discrete (vs. continuous): A limited number of distinct, clearly defined

• Single agent (vs. multiagent): An agent operating by itself in an environment.

Intelligent Agents 2022 23/48

The Nature of Environments

Solitaire Backgammon Internet shopping Taxi

The Nature of Environments

Fully vs. partially observable: an environment is full observable when the

Solitaire Backgammon Internet shopping Taxi

The Nature of Environments

Fully vs. partially observable: an environment is full observable when the