[Modeling] Modeling an Agent Class- register your opinion

[James Odell]

Frits,

Your going to run into a bit of opposition with two of your stances:

1) Agents are not restricted to being a ³piece of software.²  This leaves
out a whole group of people who are developing agent-based systems with
embedded systems and just plain hardware.

2) Many of us are not developing agent-based systems with "an intelligent
something."   Ants are not intelligent, but have been very successful for a
very long time -- and there are many systems that are being built with a
swarm-based approach.  Also, after two decades, AI still hasn't been able to
define "intelligence."  So, autonomous, interactive entities are what many
of us are building for use in commercial systems today.  I have nothing
against "intelligence", but please don't exclude my agent systems so
swiftly.


-Jim

On 6/17/03 4:14 PM, "f.tolman" indited:

> Dear Collegues
> 
> This working group is considering agent-based modelling technology, probably
> including the interaction between agent based and object based modelling.
> However, objects are no agents. Indeed everything in this world can be
> considered to be an object in the OO sense of the word. But...............the
> sensible question is: is that useful? Not, in my opinion, in agent-based
> modelling. At least not as a starting point. An agent is a metaphor for a
> piece of software that mimicks an intelligent something (real or virtual), not
> a dumb object. What we need is a modelling paradigm that can be used to
> clearly express the things that our intelligent beings will be able to do. The
> question is: in all its variety agents seem to have a common nature. Can
> anybody list and group the most important things that we all need to express
> (actions, behaviours, family?, ???) And do we have to distinguish between
> concept design and implementation design (for code generation)?
> 
> Regards
> 
> Frits
>