This book dissects the relevant terms intelligence, learning, value and goal. The author explains all relevant technical terms carefully and clearly for a general audience, who is scientifically and technically interested and literate. The main theme is the Intelligent Agent, who has both the capacity, adaptability and its own interest to act independently to pursue its own goals. What are its parts and its features? How will it be different from human agents? Will it be superior or inferior? Will it coexist with humans or compete?

By discussing these questions the book will contemplate interesting properties of intelligent agents such as subjective experience and if they can have something akin to free will. Understanding their essential properties allows us to speculate how future agents will evolve, in cooperation and competition with humans.