The Evolution of Computational Agency

Abstract

Agent-based models have emerged as a promising paradigm for addressing ever increasing complexity of information systems. In its initial days in the 1990s when object-oriented modeling was at its peak, an agent was treated as a special kind of “object” that had a persistent state and its own thread of execution. But since then, agent-based models have diversified enormously to even open new conceptual insights about the nature of systems in general. This chapter presents a perspective on the disparate ways in which our understanding of agency, as well as computational models of agency, have evolved. Advances in hardware like GPUs that brought neural networks back to life may also similarly infuse new life into agent-based models and pave the way for significant advancements in research on artificial general intelligence (AGI).