{"id":1636,"date":"2026-04-06T21:45:00","date_gmt":"2026-04-06T19:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nilsrooijmans.com\/daily\/?p=1636"},"modified":"2026-06-13T11:26:26","modified_gmt":"2026-06-13T09:26:26","slug":"what-is-an-agent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nilsrooijmans.com\/daily\/what-is-an-agent","title":{"rendered":"What is an agent?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The great Matt Shenton invited me to join him on his Paid Search NYC Podcast.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The recording will be shared later. For today, I wanted to repeat a question he asked me:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

“What is an agent?”\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Before I answer, I’d like you to know that I studied Artificial Intelligence back in the 90s.\u00a0Back then, “AI Agents” were a hot topic.\u00a0I’ve even written a thesis about “reinforcement learning in multi-agent systems.” Back then, just as today, the term “agent” wasn’t clearly defined and was a topic of debate.

So, Matt’s question invited me to open the hatch to the hold on my houseboat, to look for my thesis, and find the definition I used back then.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here’s what I had said:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

Cooperation in Multi-Agent Systems<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Communication and Cooperation in a system of multiple Q-learning agents<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nils Rooijmans
June 9, 2000<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chapter 1 – Introduction<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Within Artificial Intelligence, in the last decade of the twentieth century, there has been a significant rise of \u201cagent technology.\u201d<\/em> A clear definition of what this technology exactly entails, and what an agent actually is, has not been established to this day.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Where most people who have studied the subject agree, however, is that an agent must satisfy a number of fundamental properties.<\/em> Some of these properties are autonomy, adaptability, reactivity, and goal-directedness.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here’s what I would say today:<\/strong> an (AI) agent is a system that pursues goals through autonomous adaptive decision-making and action.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let me break this down for more clarity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

An agent combines these elements:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \n
  1. State awareness:\u00a0<\/strong>it observes some kind of environment (e.g., your Google Ads account or your product inventory) and updates its internal representation of this environment<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  2. Reasoning<\/strong>: it interprets what it “sees” and decides on the best next step (e.g., impression share is low for keywords in this ad group, or product X is running out of stock)<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  3. Actions<\/strong>: it can take actions that manipulate its environment, without being micromanaged at every step (e.g., add price extensions to your ad group, or order a next batch of products)<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  4. Goal-directed<\/strong>: it maintains alignment to a specified goal or objective, and continues acting until the goal is reached or conditions change (e.g., maximize revenue as long as POAS > 150%, or keep stock levels to a minimum without running out of stock on the top sellers that generate 80% of revenue)<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  5. Adaptive<\/strong>: it evaluates the results of its actions and uses these insights to improve its decision-making (e.g., adding price extensions resulted in a significant increase in impression share for 8 out of 10 ad groups, so in the future, let’s do that more often)<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n

    – Nils<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    The great Matt Shenton invited me to join him on his Paid Search NYC Podcast. The recording will be shared later. For today, I wanted to repeat a question he asked me: “What is an agent?”\u00a0 Before I answer, I’d like you to know that I studied Artificial Intelligence back in the 90s.\u00a0Back then, “AI … Continue reading “What is an agent?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1636","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-google-ads"],"yoast_head":"\nWhat is an agent? - Nils Rooijmans<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/nilsrooijmans.com\/daily\/what-is-an-agent\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"What is an agent? - Nils Rooijmans\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The great Matt Shenton invited me to join him on his Paid Search NYC Podcast. 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