Intelligent agent - Wikipedia

In artificial intelligence, an intelligent agent (IA) is anything which perceives its environment, takes actions autonomously in order to achieve goals, and may improve its performance with learning or may use knowledge. They may be simple or complex -- a thermostat is considered an example of an intelligent agent, as is a human being, as is any system that meets the definition, such as a firm, a state, or a biome.[1] Intelligent agents are often described schematically as an abstract functional system similar to a computer program. Researchers such as Russell & Norvig (2003) consider goal-directed behavior to be the essence of intelligence; a normative agent can be labeled with a term borrowed from economics, "rational agent". In this rational-action paradigm, an IA possesses an internal "model" of its environment.