1.5 Agent Design Space

The third edition of Artificial Intelligence: foundations of computational agents, Cambridge University Press, 2023 is now available (including full text).

1.5.1 Modularity

The first dimension is the level of modularity.

Modularity is the extent to which a system can be decomposed into interacting modules that can be understood separately.

Modularity is important for reducing complexity. It is apparent in the structure of the brain, serves as a foundation of computer science, and is an important aspect of any large organization.

Modularity is typically expressed in terms of a hierarchical decomposition.

In the modularity dimension, an agent’s structure is one of the following:

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    flat – there is no organizational structure

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    modular – the system is decomposed into interacting modules that can be understood on their own

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    hierarchical – the system is modular, and the modules themselves are decomposed into simpler modules, each of which are hierarchical systems or simple components.

In a flat or modular structure the agent typically reasons at a single level of abstraction. In a hierarchical structure the agent reasons at multiple levels of abstraction. The lower levels of the hierarchy involve reasoning at a lower level of abstraction.

Example 1.4.

In taking a trip from home to a holiday location overseas, an agent, such as yourself, must get from home to an airport, fly to an airport near the destination, then get from the airport to the destination. It also must make a sequence of specific leg or wheel movements to actually move. In a flat representation, the agent chooses one level of abstraction and reasons at that level. A modular representation would divide the task into a number of subtasks that can be solved separately (e.g., booking tickets, getting to the departure airport, getting to the destination airport, and getting to the holiday location). In a hierarchical representation, the agent will solve these subtasks in a hierarchical way, until the task is reduced to simple tasks such a sending an http request or taking a particular step.

A hierarchical decomposition is important for reducing the complexity of building an intelligent agent that acts in a complex environment. Large organizations have a hierarchical organization so that the top-level decision makers are not overwhelmed by details and do not have to micromanage all activities of the organization. Procedural abstraction and object-oriented programming in computer science are designed to enable simplification of a system by exploiting modularity and abstraction. There is much evidence that biological systems are also hierarchical.

To explore the other dimensions, we initially ignore the hierarchical structure and assume a flat representation. Ignoring hierarchical decomposition is often fine for small or moderately sized tasks, as it is for simple animals, small organizations, or small to moderately sized computer programs. When tasks or systems become complex, some hierarchical organization is required.

How to build hierarchically organized agents is discussed in Section 2.3.