Your First Steps in Muti-Agent Systems and Intelligent Agents

Well, we didn't touch today why you have so strange and perverted interest :) . Just short and pragmatic instructions for newbies.



1) First of all, learn Java programming language (particularly, Java SE 5 or 6). Today it’s the only programming language widely used in multi-agent area.

2) Then read the book M. Wooldridge, Introduction to MultiAgent Systems, Wiley, 2002.

It’s like a primer in multi-agent. You’ll see overall this area from a bird view. What you can and what you cannot do with agents? What problems can you solve? What applications are suitable for agents? What is agent’s brain and how can you implement it? And so on.


If you’ve survived by now -- it’s time to practice. It’s time to get our hands dirty with some actual coding.

3) Just download Java Agent Development Platform (Jade). It is the most popular and easily extendable agent platform I’ve seen. It’s open source project written in Java. So if you have troubles you can drill down right to concrete variable in source code :)

4) Read Jade manuals (i.e. JADEProgramming-Tutorial-for-beginners.pdf from /doc directory etc.).

5) Run examples and play with it. You can play with Jade tools or torment Jade in debugger of your favorite IDE.

You can use Jade in any Java IDE you like, just add necessary jars in your project but I prefer the Eclipse IDE for Java Developers.

6) And then start to code your first multi-agent system.


Of course, options in this steps are possible but strongly not recommended for the beginners.


Also there is a useful book which gives more solid practical coding information about overall Jade platform:

F.L. Bellifemine, G. Caire, и D. Greenwood, Developing Multi-Agent Systems with JADE, Wiley, 2007

If your need some additional theoretical background, you can read

S.J. Russell, P. Norvig, Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach, Prentice Hall, 2002.

If you interested in multi-agent aspects then look at
J.M. Vidal, Fundamentals of Multiagent Systems with NetLogo Examples, 2007.

AI Innovations Obstacles

Take the bird’s view at the whole picture of AI.


As for me the main obstacle in the path towards strong AI is the lost of interest from industry and the public. Clusters of neglected geeks are trying to make strange things working but vast majority of developers didn’t use and even understand it… Maybe it’s because of lost expectations of the early AI evangelists... or complexity of technology... or due to sectarian nature of any scientific society...


In any case we need to attract huge public attention and establish real connection with money-bringing industry. We need more fun and cool things around AI, and sometimes even more scandalous... But we must to be more close to ordinary people understanding.

Are You Ready for Virtual Chicks Army?

Ben Goerzel widely known AI specialist wrote about great potential of virtual worlds as learning environment for AI. He wants to create baby or parrot or other pet AI’s that can learn and insert them into virtual worlds where human avatars can teach them. In virtual worlds like Second Life people could teach AI avatars not only primitive tricks, but also about general concepts like space, objects and even to talk. If any one of the AI avatars learned something new it could be transferred immediately to all of the other AI avatars. With millions of virtual world residents teaching AI avatars, they could rapidly acquire artificial general intelligence.


There is no doubt that he is right. Except one thing: who wants to bring up a baby or school a talking parrot? And who wanna have sex? Feel the difference!


Let’s imagine huge army of dolls which interconnected together. Successful behavior strategies will spread amongst them. And of course we'll kill loosers. It'll be the strongest fight for survival and reproduction.


Only real breadwinners will survive. What's the cruel nature of natural selection! :)


What kind of intelligence we can gather from this virtual sex? Of course it isn’t a language. :) Mainly it is behavior improvement but they can even improve their hot digital bodies. Dolls can behave like self marketers. They are trying to sell their behavior and digital passion in their digital eyes.