LESSWRONG
LW

1422
Wikitags

Agency

Edited by Ruby, Roman Leventov, et al. last updated 26th Dec 2022

Agency or Agenticness is the property of effectively acting with an environment to achieve one's goals.  A key property of agents is that the more agentic a being is, the more you can predict its actions from its goals since its actions will be whatever will maximize the chances of achieving its goals. Agency has sometimes been contrasted with sphexishness, the blind execution of cached algorithms without regard for effectiveness. 

One might lack agency for internal reasons, e.g., being a rock that has no goals and no ability to act, or for external reasons, e.g., being a child who is granted no freedom to act as they choose.

See Also

  • Robust Agency
  • Free Energy Principle/Active Inference: a theory of agency and a prospective architecture of artificial agents.
  • Reinforcement Learning: the leading practical paradigm of creating artificial agents.
Subscribe
Discussion
1
Subscribe
Discussion
1
Posts tagged Agency
148On Devin
Zvi
1y
34
156Being a Robust Agent
Raemon
7y
32
153Decomposing Agency — capabilities without desires
Ω
owencb, Raymond Douglas
1y
Ω
32
135Think carefully before calling RL policies "agents"
Ω
TurnTrout
2y
Ω
38
59Consequentialists: One-Way Pattern Traps
David Udell
3y
3
345Optimality is the tiger, and agents are its teeth
Ω
Veedrac
3y
Ω
46
85The Agency Overhang
Jeffrey Ladish
2y
6
61[Link] Sarah Constantin: "Why I am Not An AI Doomer"
lbThingrb
2y
13
41Understanding Selection Theorems
adamk
3y
3
27LLMs may capture key components of human agency
catubc
3y
0
24An Agent is a Worldline in Tegmark V
Ω
komponisto
7y
Ω
12
203Ability to solve long-horizon tasks correlates with wanting things in the behaviorist sense
Ω
So8res
2y
Ω
84
162Saving Time
Ω
Scott Garrabrant
4y
Ω
20
152What good is G-factor if you're dumped in the woods? A field report from a camp counselor.
Hastings
2y
22
114The Open Agency Model
Ω
Eric Drexler
3y
Ω
19
Load More (15/176)
Add Posts