09 Quantifying Uncertainty

Question 1

Agents and uncertainty

Answer 1

In all real domains, the agent must be able to handle uncertainty, due to:
• Limited resources: Cannot exhaustively enumerate all possible situations and consequences of actions • Theoretical ignorance: No theory for the domain exists
• Practical ignorance: All necessary data is not available

The agent still has to act, and needs to make decisions where uncertainty is explicitly recognized. Probability can be used to summarize the state of the agent’s beliefs (or ignorance)