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Intelligent Agents

explanatory Essay
1303 words
1303 words
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Intelligent Agents

Abstract

Intelligent Agents are software abstractions which potentially can make life easier and more productive for computer users. These agents are autonomous entities that can be asked to do tedious or complicated tasks for the user or unscramble the complexities of computer applications. "Many agents are based on the idea that the user need only specify a high-level goal instead of issuing explicit instructions, leaving the 'how' and 'when' decisions to the agent" 3. The agent either steps the user through the process at hand or goes off on its own and reports back with the requested information or completed task. Artificial Intelligence principles are used to program these agents.

Introduction

The modern computer era has brought with it a phenomenal volume of information. The internet in particular is comprised of far too much information for any one person to utilize. Therefore computer users must be able to use their time efficiently. One must be able to filter through all the information bringing back only pertinent, recent data quickly and easily. Also, as applications and hardware become more powerful and complicated, the user must be able to figure out how to master new tasks. These two challenges can be made easier with the use of intelligent agents. One example would be the following: A person wants to find a job in the computer industry as a programmer and decides to search the internet for available positions. Without the use of intelligent agents, the person would spend hours searching for every position having to do with computers and programming. A search query would return thousands upon thousands of links that would have to be weeded through to find the ones that were pertinent. An ...

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...be expertly guided through complicated procedures by these agents.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1 http://www.networking.ibm.com/iag/iaghome.htm

2 http://nittany.ca.sandia.gov:8001/defs.html

3 http://cyclone.cs.clemson.edu/~mark/agents.html

4 http://www.advtech.microsoft.com/research/ui/persona/isbister.htm

5 http://www.doc.mmu.ac.uk/STAFF/mike/ker95/ker95.html

6 Maes, P. (1994b). Social interface agents: Acquiring competence by learning from users and other agents. In Etzioni, O., editor, Software Agents - Papers from the 1994 Spring Symposium (Technical Report SS-94-03), pages 71-78. AAAI Press.

7 Newell, A. and Simon, H. A. (1976). Computer science as empirical enquiry. Communications of the ACM, 19:113-126.

8 Shoham, Y. (1990). Agent-oriented programming. Technical Report STAN-CS-1335-90, Computer Science Department, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305

In this essay, the author

  • Explains that intelligent agents are software abstractions that can make life easier and more productive for computer users.
  • Explains that the modern computer era has brought with it a phenomenal volume of information. the user must be able to use their time efficiently, filter through all the information, and master new tasks.
  • Explains how ibm's intelligent agent division describes agents as a new class of software which can act on the user’s behalf by finding and filtering information, personalizing it for you, negotiating for services, and automating tedious tasks.
  • Explains the three main aspects of intelligent agents: agent theories, agent architectures, and agent languages.
  • Explains the physical-symbol system hypothesis and how intelligent agents must be implemented in a programming language.
  • Opines that intelligent agents could be very good for computer users because they could devote more time to more important tasks while their agents do all the tedious work.
  • Cites maes, p. and etzioni, o., editors, software agents - papers from the 1994 spring symposium.
  • States newell, a., and simon, h.a. (1976). computer science as empirical enquiry.
  • Explains shoham, y., "agent-oriented programming". technical report stan-cs-1335-90, stanford university.
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