Qiaochu_Yuan comments on Thoughts On The Relationship Between Life and Intelligence - Less Wrong Discussion
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My impression is that this is not how AI researchers use the word "goal." The kind of agent you're describing is a "reflex agent": it acts only based on the current precept. A goal-directed agent is explicitly one that models the world, extrapolates future states of the world, and takes action to cause future states of the world to be a certain way. To model the world accurately, in particular, a goal-directed agent must take into account all of its past precepts.
Goal-based agents are something quite specific in AI, but it is not clear that we should use that particular definition whenever referring to goals/aims/purpose. I'm fine with choosing it and going with that - avoiding definitional squabbles - but it wasn't clear prima facie (hence the grandparent).