Yes, that’s what I already quoted. But earlier in the same comment you said this:
It would still be a utility function—in that it would assign real-valued utilities to possible actions (before selecting the action with highest utility).
There you are saying that it maps actions to utilities. Hence my question.
I have something to say in response, but I can’t until I know what you actually mean, and the version that you have just reasserted makes no sense to me.
Utilities are scalar values associated with possible motor outputs (“actions” is a synonym for “motor outputs”).
The scalar values an agent needs in order to decide what to do are the ones which are associated with its possible actions. Agents typically consider their possible actions, consider their expected consequences, assign utilities to these consequences—and then select the action that is associated with the highest utility.
The inputs to the utility function are all the things the agent knows about the world—so: its sense inputs (up to and including its proposed action) and its memory contents.
Utility functions are maps between sensory inputs (including memories) and scalar values associated with possible motor outputs.
Yes, that’s what I already quoted. But earlier in the same comment you said this:
There you are saying that it maps actions to utilities. Hence my question.
I have something to say in response, but I can’t until I know what you actually mean, and the version that you have just reasserted makes no sense to me.
Utilities are scalar values associated with possible motor outputs (“actions” is a synonym for “motor outputs”).
The scalar values an agent needs in order to decide what to do are the ones which are associated with its possible actions. Agents typically consider their possible actions, consider their expected consequences, assign utilities to these consequences—and then select the action that is associated with the highest utility.
The inputs to the utility function are all the things the agent knows about the world—so: its sense inputs (up to and including its proposed action) and its memory contents.