Autonomy: A Nice Idea in Theory

Autonomy is perplexing. It is recognisably and undeniably a critical issue in the field of intelligent agents and multi-agent systems, yet it is often ignored or simply assumed. For many, agents are autonomous by definition, and they see no need to add the tautologous prefix in explicitly considering autonomous agents, while for others autonomy in agents is an important yet problematic issue that demands attention. The difficulty when considering autonomy, however, is that there are different conceptual levels at which to reason and argue, including the philosophical and the practical. The notion of autonomy has associated with it many variations of meaning. According to Steels, autonomous systems must be automatic systems and, in addition, they must have the capacity to form and adapt their behaviour while operating in the environment. Thus traditional AI systems and most robots are automatic but not autonomous — they are not independent of the control of their designers [7].