From Intelligent Agents to Intelligent Beings

This paper puts forward a novel concept: the intelligent being. Intelligent agents emphasize action and decision-making, which is strongly reflected in the results of agent research. However, real-world applications require much more than decision-making and the intelligent being addresses a crucial part of this: reflecting reality into the agent world. Importantly, reflecting some part of reality offers significant benefits for software developers. Indeed, properly designed intelligent beings inherit the coherency and consistency of the corresponding reality. This allows the development of systems with unprecedented complexity and size. This paper discusses the novel concept and its implications for software development. Importantly, the intelligent agents themselves may be considered as part of the corresponding reality, resulting in short-term fore-