THE STABILIZATION OF ENVIRONMENTS

In planning and activity research there are two common approaches to m atching agents with environments. Either the agent is designed with a specific environment in mind, or it is provided with learning capabili ties so that it can adapt to the environment it is placed in. In this paper we look at a third and underexploited alternative: designing age nts which adapt their environments to suit themselves. We call this st abilization, and we present a taxonomy of types of stability that huma n beings typically both rely on and enforce. We also taxonomize the wa ys in which stabilization behaviors can be cued and learned, We illust rate these ideas with a program called FIXPOINT, which improves its pe rformance over time by stabilizing its environment.