What is the difference between goal-based agents and utility-based agents?
Goal and utility could be considered ways of defining desire and happiness in intelligent agents….
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Int
Goal-based agents further expand on the capabilities of the model-based agents, by using “goal” information. Goal information describes situations that are desirable. This allows the agent a way to choose among multiple possibilities, selecting the one which reaches a goal state. Search and planning are the subfields of artificial intelligence devoted to finding action sequences that achieve the agent’s goals.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Int
Goal-based agents only distinguish between goal states and non-goal states. It is possible to define a measure of how desirable a particular state is. This measure can be obtained through the use of a utility function which maps a state to a measure of the utility of the state. A more general performance measure should allow a comparison of different world states according to exactly how happy they would make the agent. The term utility can be used to describe how “happy” the agent is.