Agent-mediated Electronic Commerce Scientific and technological roadmap Carles Sierra

Internet growth 4 17 million users in million users world-wide in Disparity: Sweden 40.9%, Italy 8% of usage 4 Users already sampled buying over the web (f.i. 40% in the UK) 4 Many regular shoppers (f.i. 10% in the UK)

Expenses produced 4 Disparity 4 Shoppers in Europe 4 Revenue Shoppers Revenue Finland 20 times more than Spain million 4 EUR3,032 million million 4 EUR57,210 million

EU Support

Mediation in EC 4 Autonomy 4 Personalisation 4 Social ability 4 Intelligence 4 Initial example: PersonaLogic

Interaction 4 To undertake a course of action 4 To modify a course of action 4 To agree on a common course of action 4 AUCTIONS 4 NEGOTIATION

Auctions 4 Platforms. FM1.0 (IIIA) 4 Formal modelling. U. Bath 4 Electronic Markets. BT, SICS. 4 EU Projects. MEMO, ACTIVE, AIMEDIA, GAVEL.

Negotiation 4 Cathegorization: –Size limites resources unknown –Set of agents unknown –Characteristics of agents unknown –Strategies are unknown 4 Groups study: –Models for negotiation –Argumentation –Simulation

Trust in Interaction 4 Identity 4 Honesty 4 Escrow services 4 Third parties for delivery 4 Certification 4 TRUSTe, ConsumerInfo.com, BBBOnLine, WAB 4 iescrow.com 4 Trade-direct.com

Applications 4 Rich variety –Market places, Electricity management, Business, banking and finance, Telecoms, … 4 Many AI techniques –Data mining (clustering), Profiling (personalised communication), Case-based reasoning (shopping assistants) 4 EU Projects: MIMIC, NECTAR, AIMEDIA, WEBSELL, DIALS.

Engineering + Products 4 Deliberative approaches 4 Generic 4 One-stop-shop 4 Market places 4 Electronic Auctions 4 Negotiation 4 Mobility 4 BDI, case-based, fuzzy. 4 Grasshoper 4 AIMEDIA 4 ZEUS, SICS Marketspace 4 FM CASBA 4 Mole 3.0

Other issues 4 Standards. FIPA. 4 Security –Many solutions: authentication, access control, encryption, signatures, certification, … 4 Legal issues and Privacy –Preference models. –EU directives into P3P

Future trends

Challenges 4 Relate ideal and actual agent behaviour 4 Relate roles of agents and their inherent qualities 4 Generate ontologies, interaction standards and social conventions 4 Generate new products, services and practices

Interaction 4 Dramatic change of supply chains 4 Decrease of customer’s prices 4 Old markets will change 4 New markets for commodities soon –Power, telephone, bandwidth, … 4 Auctions intermediated with agents will bloom. Products mid-2000.

Negotiation 4 Soon: Applications where –Interactions are very fast –Interactions are repeated –Each trade is of relative small value –The process is repeated over long times Need for a significant value Preference elicitation complex. Need for learning –The product is relatively easy to specify

Challenges for negotiation 4 Trust –Confidentiality, integrity, authentication and non-repudiation. –Safe payment and delivery –Supervised interaction first –Reputation via Chambers of Commerce 4 Protocol standards

Challenges for negotiation 4 Preference modelling –Dynamics of preferences –Different ontologies –Fuzziness –Learning 4 Argumentation 4 Protocols –From fixed to dynamic –Negotiation of protocols

Applications 4 Travel agencies 4 Retail industry:Sainsbury and Otto Versand 4 Auction house for general trade 4 Procurement applications (Bangeman’s challenge winners)

Engineering 4 Adaptavility 4 Mobility 4 Trust modelling 4 Legal issues 4 Open vs closed markets 4 Electronic Institutions: Heterogeneity, trust and scalability, exception handling and societal change

Other challenges 4 New products: market places and agent servers 4 New standards: FIPA, W3C, P3P. FIPA and OMG signed agreement 4 Security: preferences, public key servers and signature management by agent servers 4 Privacy protection according to EU 95/46 directive

Vision 4 Mobile devices 4 Context perception 4 Deregulation 4 Disappearing computer That is: To put the customer at the heart of the business