Agents in artificial intelligence have three properties:
- Sense - The ability to percieve state conditions, internal or external
- Rationality - The Agent follows rules
- Acts - The agent acts upon an environment based on its own sense and rationality.
Agents can be simple or complex. The light meters in analogue cameras that move a needle depending on light conditions are simple intelligent agents as is a thermostat. Complex intelligent agents incorporate more senses to their set of rules and act upon them accordingly. Autonomous Unmanned Vehicles and High Frequency Trading systems are exapmles of complex intelligent agents that have been much discussed in contemporary media.