1. Intelligent Agents

2. 2 What is an Agent? The main point about agents is they are autonomous: capable of acting independently, exhibiting control over their internal state Thus: an agent is a computer system capable of autonomous action in some environment in order to meet its design objectives SYSTEM ENVIRONMENT input output

3. 3 Reactivity If a program’s environment is guaranteed to be fixed, the program need never worry about its own success or failure – program just executes blindly – Example of fixed environment: compiler The real world is not like that: things change, information is incomplete. Many (most?) interesting environments are dynamic Software is hard to build for dynamic domains: program must take into account possibility of failure – ask itself whether it is worth executing! A reactive system is one that maintains an ongoing interaction with its environment, and responds to changes that occur in it (in time for the response to be useful)

4. 4 Proactiveness Reacting to an environment is easy (e.g., stimulus  response rules) But we generally want agents to do things for us Hence goal directed behavior Pro-activeness = generating and attempting to achieve goals; not driven solely by events; taking the initiative Recognizing opportunities

5. Why intelligent agents? Everyday tasks become computer-based An increasing number of untrained users using computers Current human-computer interfaces require users to initiate all tasks and monitor them - manually Intelligent agents engage in a cooperative process with the user to leverage the effectiveness and efficiency of human-computer interaction Staggering growth in information availability Intelligent agents can be a tool for relieving the user of this information overload Intelligent agents can act as personal assistants to the user to manage information Might one day take over routine tasks in personal management such as appointments, meetings and travel arrangements 5

6. What intelligent agents can do for us Carry out tasks on the user’s behalf Train or teach the user Help different users collaborate Monitor events and procedures Specifically, intelligent agents can help us with – Information retrieval – Information filtering – Mail management – Recreational activities – selection of books, music, holidays – Booking of meetings, hotels, tickets 6

7. What intelligent agents can do for us (cont’d) Information filtering agent One type is the selection of articles from a continuous stream to suit particular user needs User can create “news agents” and train them by giving positive or negative feedback for articles recommended The use of key words alone can be restrictive Underlying semantics must be extracted for more effectiveness Eg VPOP Technologies' Newshub - an automated, agent- based web news feeder service, which delivers customised updates of stories from major news outlets every 15 minutes 7

8. What intelligent agents can do for us (cont’d) Electronic mail agent Assist users with electronic mail Learn to prioritize, delete, forward, sort and archive mail messages on behalf of the user May use intelligent system techniques like case-based reasoning Can associate a level of confidence with its action or suggestion Use of “do-it” and “tell-me” thresholds set by user May involve multi-agent collaboration 8

9. What intelligent agents can do for us (cont’d) Selection agents for entertainment Conversational agents show potential for becoming popular and commercially successful eg Cybelle, ALICE Use “social filtering” – correlation between different users to make recommendations on books, CDs, films etc. So, if user A liked items X and Y, and user B liked item X and Z, then item Z may be recommended for user A Amazon.com has been using this system for years -> 9 Hi, I am Cybelle. What is your name?

10. ICT61910

11. Characteristics of a good agent Action Agent must be able to take some action and not just provide advice Present state of web technology limits capability of Internet agents As the Internet becomes more agent-friendly, more capable agents will emerge Autonomy An agent can be much more useful if it can act autonomously The right level of autonomy for a task must be found 11

12. Characteristics of a good agent (cont.) Communication Must communicate well with the user Should understand user’s goals, preferences and constraints Useful communication requires shared knowledge on – language of communication – problem domain Example Problem: Web search engines accept key words and phrases (some knowledge of the language) but understand nothing about the documents they retrieve (no domain knowledge) Solution: provision of a machine-readable ontology - a definition of a body of knowledge including its components and their relationships 12

13. Characteristics of a good agent (cont.) Adaptation Can gain user confidence by learning user preferences ML techniques such as ANNS and GA Adapting to user preferences can be also achieved by using data mining techniques such as clustering Agent forms clusters of users with similar features User's needs can then be anticipated by placing the user in one of these clusters and analysing the cluster Social problem solving method, similar to Amazon recommendations 13

14. Intelligent agents in E-Commerce (cont’d) In the need-identification stage, agents can help in purchases that are repetitive or predictable Continuously running agents can monitor a set of sensors or data streams and take actions when certain pre-specified conditions apply Agents can use rule-based systems or data mining techniques to discover patterns in customer behaviour to help customers find products 14

15. Intelligent agents in E-commerce (cont.) In the merchant brokering stage, on-line shopping agents can look up prices for a chosen product for a number of merchants Many business-to-business transactions are canvassed In a web auction, customers are required to manage their own negotiation strategies Intelligent agents can help with this 15