Autonomous Agent

Context:
- It can perform Autonomous Agent Tasks (possibly within a multi-agent system).
- It can possess:
  - Agent Resources of its own.
  - Agent Capabilities (skills) to perform an activity (be a capable agent).
  - Agent Goals and Agent Objectives.
  - Agent Memory, such as agent internal states.
- It can (often) Optimize its Activity.
- It can range from being a Virtual Agent to being a Physical Agent.
- It can range from being an Intelligent Agent (with a mind) to being a Non-Intelligent Agent.
- It can range from being a Mobile Autonomous Agent to being a Affixed Autonomous Agent.
- It can range from being an Emotional Agent to being a Non-Emotional Agent.
- It can range from being an Autonomous Machine to being an Autonomous Organism.
- …
Example(s):
- a Moral Agent, such as a person.
- an Economic Agent.
- a Software-based Agent.
- an LLM-based Autonomous Agent.
- …
Counter-Example(s):
- a Plant.
See: Reasoning, Decision, Multi-Agent System (MAS), Artificial Intelligence, Swarm Intelligence, Evolutionary Computation.

References

(Wikipedia, 2014) ⇒ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/autonomy Retrieved:2014-11-26.
- Autonomy (Ancient Greek: αὐτονομία autonomia from αὐτόνομος autonomos from αὐτο- auto- "self" and νόμος nomos, "law", hence when combined understood to mean "one who gives oneself one's own law") is a concept found in moral, political, and bioethical philosophy. Within these contexts, it is the capacity of a rational individual to make an informed, un-coerced decision. In moral and political philosophy, autonomy is often used as the basis for determining moral responsibility and accountability for one's actions. One of the best known philosophical theories of autonomy was developed by Kant. In medicine, respect for the autonomy of patients is an important goal, though it can conflict with a competing ethical principle, namely beneficence. Autonomy is also used to refer to the self-government of the people.

(Stanford U, 2013) ⇒ http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/personal-autonomy/
- Autonomous agents are self-governing agents. But what is a self-governing agent? Governing oneself is no guarantee that one will have a greater range of options in the future, or the sort of opportunities one most wants to have. Since, moreover, a person can govern herself without being able to appreciate the difference between right and wrong, it seems that an autonomous agent can do something wrong without being to blame for her action. What, then, are the necessary and sufficient features of this self-relation? Philosophers have offered a wide range of competing answers to this question.

(Kahneman, 2011) ⇒ Daniel Kahneman. (2011). “Thinking, Fast and Slow." Macmillan. ISBN:0374533555
- QUOTE: … Bruno Frey barely recalls writing the piece, but I can still recite its first sentence: “The agent of economic theory is rational, selfish, and his tastes do not change.” …

(Wiktionary, 2009) ⇒ http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/agent
- One who exerts power, or has the power to act;
- an actor;
- One who acts for, or in the place of, another (the principal), by authority from him;
- one …

(ISI, 2009) ⇒ http://www.isi.edu/~hobbs/bgt-cause.text
- 2. Agents and Agenthood
- There are some entities in the world that are viewed as being capable of initiating a causal chain. This is a scientifically inaccurate view; when a dog stands up and walks across a room, there are events in its brain that caused it to do so. But the idea pervades commonsense reasoning. We say that the dog's walking was caused by the dog, and don't necessarily expect to find anterior causes.
- We will call such entities agents. People are the prime examples of agents, but the class also includes robots and other intelligent software, higher animals, organizations, and a variety of fictional entities like gods, ghosts, and goblins. Frequently, when we use a person metaphor for some other type of entity, agenthood is what motivates us.

(Sen, 1999) ⇒ Amartya Sen. (1999). “Development As Freedom." Oxford University Press.
- QUOTE: The use of the term “agency” calls for a little clarification. The expression “agent” is sometimes employed in the literature of economics and game theory to denote a person who is acting on someone else's behalf (perhaps being led on by a “principle"), and whose achievements are to be assessed in the light of someone else's (the principal's) goals. I am using the term “agent” not in this sense, but in its older - and "grander" - sense as someone who acts and brings about change, and whose achievements can be judged in terms of her own values and objectives, whether or not we assess them in terms of some external criteria as well. This work is particularly concerned with the agency role of the individual as a member of the public and as a participant in economic, social and political actions (varying from taking part in the market to being involved, directly or indirectly, in individual or joint activities in political and other spheres).