Part I — Setting the Scene: Two Traditions, One Field

Why more than one agent, where the field has been, and what has changed. These two chapters motivate the subject through problems that no single agent can even represent — closing with an honest account of more than three decades of research on autonomous agents, and why a premature theory has suddenly become applicable — and then examine the foundation model as the new cognitive substrate: what it provides, and what it conspicuously does not.