AI AGENTS (Syllabus: GS Paper 3 – Sci and Tech)
Context: AI assistants like Apple's Siri and Amazon's Alexa have been around for over a decade, offering various functionalities. These tools can be defined in multiple ways, reflecting their diverse capabilities.
AI Agents
- About: An artificial intelligence (AI) agent is a software program that can interact with its environment, collect data, and use the data to perform self-determined tasks to meet predetermined goals.
o For example, consider a contact center AI agent that wants to resolves customer queries. Based on the customer responses, it determines if it can resolve the query itself or pass it on to a human.
- Classification of AI Agents:
o Reactive Agents: The first-generation AI agents are reactive, responding to specific inputs or commands based on predefined rules. They lack the ability to learn or adapt.
o Learning Agents: Enabled by machine learning, these agents can learn from experience, detect patterns, analyze data, and improve their performance over time.
o Cognitive Agents: The most advanced AI agents, cognitive agents, can reason, analyze, plan, learn from their environment, and make decisions based on algorithms and knowledge.
Features:
- Autonomous Operation: Cognitive AIAs can operate autonomously without user intervention, performing multiple functions as user agents.
- Integration with IoT: They can connect with multiple devices via the Internet of Things (IoT) to collect and analyze data in real time.
- Natural Language Processing: Cognitive AIAs can understand human speech and language, enabling them to perform complex tasks requiring multiple skills.
- Applications: Examples include planning trips based on user preferences and experiences, handling items in a warehouse, driving autonomous vehicles, and guiding financial investments and treatment plans.
