Self-sufficiency means an agent's ability to sustain itself over extended periods of time.

Self-sufficiency always pertains to a particular ecological niche. An ecological niche is the ränge of environmental variables within which a species, or an autonomous agent, can exist. Agents are always designed (by an engineer or by evolution) for a particular ecological niche: There is no universal agent in the real world. If the specific properties of the ecological niche are exploited, scalability of learning algorithms can often be achieved.