agent

Go back to the [[AI Glossary]]

#rl

In reinforcement learning, the entity that uses a policy to maximize expected return gained from transitioning between states of the environment.

An agent is a complex object capable of verifying a claim.

agent-based modelling

Agent Based Models are computer models that attempt to capture the behaviour of individuals within an environment. They are more intuitive that mathematical or statistical models as the represent objects as we see them: as individual things in the world.

– Agent Based Modelling: Introduction

Contrast with [[equation-based modelling]].

History

Agent Based Models to some extent evolved from [[Cellular Automata]] (CA), and because of this, and because one of the first useful CA models (the Schelling model) was by a social scientist and has been re-implemented many times with ABM, it is worth saying something about CAs before we then go on to look at ABM.

– Agent Based Modelling: Introduction

^ [[Schelling's model of segregation]].

Thoughts

One thing I wonder is how do ABMs deal with models of things that are not geographically situated together? What I've seen so far (at least in NetLogo) feels very much like how do things that are physically situated together interact. What about if you're not physically together? Perhaps that's where network modelling comes in. Or perhaps you just represent things in a way that the physical geographically is collapsed / doesn't matter.

Agent-based modelling of predator-prey dynamics

My final year project of my undergraduate degree was comparing the Lotka-Volterra equations to an agent-based model of predator-prey dynamics.

It wasn't so much predator-prey dynamics that interested me - it was the [[agent-based modelling]]. Though I do like when software has some [[link back to nature]], one way or another.

I really enjoyed it, from memory. I definitely had more of an affinity for the agent-based way of doing things, rather than the differential equation approach.

I got an award for best final year project.

Helder S Ribeiro

• agentofuser.com/, creator of [[ipfs deploy]]
• Twitter @agentofuser

I’m a software engineer and entrepreneur bootstrapping Keykapp -- a user-automatable, predictive, on-screen keyboard for VR and brain-machine interfaces.

Based in [[Brazil]].

agents