[aithrowawaycomm]

I would say the situation for "agent" is about 10,000 times worse than it is for "set," since all the definitions for set are essentially different ways to make Frege / Cantor more rigorous. The underlying scientific concept hasn't actually changed that much: "belonging to a set and a few certain operations are primitives, join these primitives with formal logic." This is the idea behind a famous intro book, Paul Halmos's Naive Set Theory. Even a set theory with Russell's paradox is scientifically defensible, it just needs refinement.

In contrast, "agent" discusses a huge range of scientific concepts, and I have yet to see a single definition of agent that holds up to scientific scrutiny. This book has managed to define "agent" in a way that is entirely equivalent to "physical object" - putting worms and thermostats in the same category broadens the category to utter uselessness. By this definition, Jupiter is an agent.

The only utility of definitions like this is for dishonest people to cheat at arguments: claiming simple tools are agents, then arguing they are like dogs and humans, which are also agents. It's a total waste of time, coming from AI's shameless disrespect for scientific standards.

[fc417fc802]

> By this definition, Jupiter is an agent.

Is it? What task was it designed to carry out autonomously? Where are the inputs and the logic hiding?

> for dishonest people to cheat at arguments

Only if the goal is to deceive. If the communication is well intentioned then there is nothing inherently wrong with it despite it not being to your liking.

[aithrowawaycomm]

The problem is they also put "worms" in the same category, and they aren't designed by humans to do anything! Why is it that the natural laws of a worm responding to Earth's environment are distinct from the natural laws of Jupiter responding to the solar system's environment? I suppose because of complexity. But then why is a thermostat different from Jupiter despite being considerably simpler? I suppose because it was designed by humans and can be controlled. But then what about the worm, which is just as natural as Jupiter? "Thermostat" is especially problematic because a cheap thermostat is very simple to describe completely as a thermo-electric balance equation: it is certainly simpler to describe than an irregular ball rolling down an irregular hill. Yet apparently the thermostat is an agent and the ball is not.

The definition is just incoherent! "Sometimes an agent is deterministic and in this case the term only includes manmade tools, other times an agent is an apparently nondeterministic automaton and in this case we can include natural life." It only allows "agent" to be labelled ad hoc, and in particular blurs the distinction between "nondeterministic tool" and "lifeform" in ways that are scientifically unjustifiable. The only people this pointless word game benefits are liars like Sam Altman and Mustafa Suleyman; if people are well-intentioned then these definitions bring nothing but confusion.

[fc417fc802]

By your own logic you could argue that humans are just as natural as worms (and Jupiter). I don't know if you'd then extend that to include anything we build as well but even if you don't there's already a glaring issue - your criteria has resulted in the terminology being rather useless. It appears to include approximately everything or approximately nothing.

Similar logic can be used to argue that machines are no different from rocks.

At the end of the day it's an argument of semantics so it's always going to come down to some fairly arbitrary criteria. You could survey people to determine common usage. You could establish a standards body to define it. Probably some other options as well.

Recall that Pluto used to be considered a planet.

I think their apparent definition seems fairly reasonable, although it's far from the only one. It appears to amount to living organisms plus any machinations constructed by said organisms that respond to the environment in some clear manner. Thus worms, dogs, humans, and thermostats. Probably not bicycles or hammers. Drones probably only qualify when operating in an autonomous mode. I'm not seeing the issue.