|
>What are they ? Possible uses Why use them ? The future Further resources |
What are they ?(page 2 of 2)Agents that fit the stronger notion of agent usually have one or more of the following characteristics: * mobility : the ability of an agent to move around an electronic network; * benevolence : is the assumption that agents do not have conflicting goals, and that every agent will therefore always try to do what is asked of it; * rationality : is (crudely) the assumption that an agent will act in order to achieve its goals and will not act in such a way as to prevent its goals being achieved - at least insofar as its beliefs permit; * adaptivity : an agent should be able to adjust itself to the habits, working methods and preferences of its user; * collaboration : an agent should not unthinkingly accept (and execute) instructions, but should take into account that the human user makes mistakes (e.g. give an order that contains conflicting goals), omits important information and/or provides ambiguous information. For instance, an agent should check things by asking questions to the user, or use a built-up user model to solve problems like these. An agent should even be allowed to refuse to execute certain tasks, because (for instance) they would put an unacceptable high load on the network resources or because it would cause damage to other users. Although no single agent possesses all these abilities, there are several prototype agents that posses quite a lot of them (see 'examples'). At this moment no consensus has yet been reached about the relative importance (weight) of each of these characteristics in the agent as a whole. What most scientists have come to a consensus about, is that it are these kinds of characteristics that distinguish agents from ordinary programs. At a minimum, an agent must run a-synchronously. A more advanced agent can interact with other entities such as data, applications, or services. Further advanced agents collaborate and negotiate with other agents. What exactly makes an agent "intelligent" is something that is hard to define. It has been the subject of many discussions in the field of Artificial Intelligence, and a clear answer has yet to be found. Yet, a workable definition of what makes an agent intelligent is given thus : "Intelligence is the degree of reasoning and learned behaviour: the agent's ability to accept the user's statement of goals and carry out the task delegated to it. At a minimum, there can be some statement of preferences, perhaps in the form of rules, with an inference engine or some other reasoning mechanism to act on these preferences. Higher levels of intelligence include a user model or some other form of understanding and reasoning about what a user wants done, and planning the means to achieve this goal. Further out on the intelligence scale are systems that learn and adapt to their environment, both in terms of the user's objectives, and in terms of the resources available to the agent. Such a system might, like a human assistant, discover new relationships, connections, or concepts independently from the human user, and exploit these in anticipating and satisfying user needs." (See 'further resources' for details of a more eleborated overview of the theoretical and practical aspects of agents.) |
| Previous Page | Main Menu | Next Page |
HOME PAGE | INTRODUCTION | WHAT IS AN AGENT| POSSIBLE USES |
| WHY USE AGENTS | THE FUTURE| FURTHER RESOURCES|
| REFERENCES |