AI engineering glossary · Reinforcement learning
What is agent?
Agent: The learner and decision-maker in a trial-and-error learning setup. At each step it looks at the situation, picks an action, and later receives a numeric score. Its goal is to choose actions that maximise the total score it collects.
Agent: an example
In a chess program, the piece of software that picks each move is the agent; the board and opponent form its surroundings.
Related terms
More Reinforcement learning terms
- AlphaGo
- AlphaZero
- Baseline (policy gradient)
- Behavioural cloning
- Belief state
- Bellman backup
- Bellman equation
- Bellman optimality equation
Where you learn it
Agent is part of the AI Engineering Program, which teaches it with notes, a hands-on lab and an exam. The first lesson is free.