Agent

Agent, is that you?

Anything is an agent in RL settings. An agent make things happen around it, and make changes to the environment. You have a big carbon footprint? You’re changing the earth, so even you are an agent in RL’s world!

Agent in deep learning.

An agent in deep learning is nothing different from a model. We’ve learnt many different models, and they can all be an agent if we apply the correct RL setting. For example, the cat/dog classifier. If we design the algorithm such that the cat/dog classifier prints ‘cat’ when a cat is found, and ‘dog’ when a dog is seen, it is changing the computer’s state (its environment)!

However, usually we choose a classifier for environments where only a few actions are allowed (like key pressing), and regressive models for tasks where any action can be selected (like steering a wheel).