Is that really the standard definition of agent though? Most textbooks I’ve seen talk of agents working towards the achievement of a goal, but it says nothing about the permanence of that goal system. I would expect an “idealized agent” to always take actions that maximize likelihood of achieving its goals, but that is orthogonal from whether the system of goals changes.
Then take my definition of agent in this post as “expected utility maximiser with a clear and distinct utility that is, in practice, Cartesianianly separated from the rest of the universe”, and I’ll try and be clearer in subsequent posts.
Is that really the standard definition of agent though? Most textbooks I’ve seen talk of agents working towards the achievement of a goal, but it says nothing about the permanence of that goal system. I would expect an “idealized agent” to always take actions that maximize likelihood of achieving its goals, but that is orthogonal from whether the system of goals changes.
Then take my definition of agent in this post as “expected utility maximiser with a clear and distinct utility that is, in practice, Cartesianianly separated from the rest of the universe”, and I’ll try and be clearer in subsequent posts.