An agent is anything that perceives its environment and acts upon it. The document discusses the history, current status, and key concepts of artificial intelligence (AI) such as agents, environments, and rational behavior. It provides examples to illustrate agents and their task environments, describing properties like being fully/partially observable, deterministic/stochastic, episodic/sequential, static/dynamic, discrete/continuous, and single/multi-agent. The document also summarizes the four main approaches to AI as thinking and acting humanly or rationally.