Artificial Intelligence and Robotics Commons^™

Beyond Autonomy: The Self And Life Of Social Agents, Budhitama Subagdja, Ah-Hwee Tan

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Agents have gained popularity nowadays as virtual assistants and companions of their human users supporting daily activities in many aspects of personal life. Designed to be sociable, an agent engages its user(s) to communicate and even develop friendships. Rather than just as a lifeless toy, it is supposed to be perceived as an individual with its own personality, experiences, and social life. In this paper, we seek to highlight self-hood as another dimension that characterizes an agent. Besides levels of autonomy and reasoning, an agent can be defined based on its capacity to process and reflect on its own self …