1. The Understanding Web: Natural Language Technologies and Internet Agents Dr. Dekai Wu CEO, iSilk

2. Technology Origins Spun out from HKUST research labs (Hong Kong University of Science & Technology) - Natural Language Processing technology (HKUST Human Language Technology Center) - Internet Agent technology (HKUST Cyberspace Center) We have deployed our statistical NLP technology for a broad range of web agents…

3. Sample Applications & Expertise NLP Web Agents Information seeking agents Chatterbots Question answering agents Voice browsing agents Linguistic machine-learning agents Persistent browser agents

4. Persistent Browser Agents Heavyweight alternatives Java Downloaded components Lightweight alternatives EcmaScript Problem: lacks remote function calls iSilk WebCaller™ Distributed object platform Clean, uniform communication between heterogeneous objects EcmaScript, Java, C++ Allows persistent browser agents without Java or downloaded components

5. Example Application: Hongkong.com Powered by iSilk Persistent Translation Browsing Agent

7. Agent Architecture

8. Enablers for NLP Web Agents: Key Web Standards Procedural languages EcmaScript Java Declarative representations XML RDF “Semantic Web” What’s missing…?

9. Future Directions Thank you.