What are
they ?
Possible
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>Why use
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The
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Why use Agents ?
Big changes are taking place in the area of information supply and demand. The first big change, which took place quite a while ago, is related to the form information is available in. In the past, paper was the most frequently used media for information, and it is still very popular now. However, more and more information is available through electronic media.
Other aspects of information that have changed rapidly in the last few years are the amount that it is available in, the number of sources and the ease with which it can be obtained. Expectations are that these developments will carry on into the future.
Meeting information demand has become easier on one hand, but has also become more
complicated and difficult on the other. Because of the emergence of information sources such as the world-wide computer network called the Internet, everyone, in principle, can have access to a sheer inexhaustible pool of information. Typically, one would expect that because of this satisfying information demand has become easier.
The sheer endlessness of the information available through the Internet, which at first glance looks like its major strength, is at the same time one of its major weaknesses. The amounts of information that are at your disposal are too vast: information that is being sought is (probably) available somewhere, but often only parts of it can be retrieved, or sometimes nothing can be found at all. The inquirers for information are being confronted with an information overkill.
The current, conventional search methods do not seem to be able to tackle these problems. These methods are based on the principle that it is known which information is available (and which one is not) and where exactly it can be found. To make this possible, large information systems such as databases are supplied with (large) indexes to provide the user with this information. With the aid of such an index one can, at all times, look up whether certain information can or cannot be found in the database, and - if available - where it can be found.
On the Internet (but not just there) this strategy fails completely, the reasons for this being:
* The dynamic nature of the Internet itself:
there is no central supervision on
the growth and development of Internet. Anybody who wants to use it and/or offer
information or services on it, is free to do so. This has created a situation where it
has become very hard to get a clear picture of the size of the Internet, let alone to
make an estimation of the amount of information that is available on or through it; |
* The dynamic nature of the information on Internet:
information that cannot be
found today, may become available tomorrow. And the reverse happens too: information that
was available, may suddenly disappear without further notice, for instance because an
Internet service has stopped its activities, or because information has been moved to a
different, unknown location; |
* The information and information services on the Internet are very
heterogeneous:
information on the Internet is being offered in many different kinds
of formats and in many different ways. This makes it very difficult to search for
information automatically, because every information format and every type of information
service requires a different approach. |
The current solution to these problems is the search engine.
Although search engines are a valuable service at this moment, they also have several disadvantages (which will become even more apparent in the future). A totally different solution for the problem is the use of so-called Intelligent Software Agents. An agent is (usually) a software program that supports a user with the accomplishment of some task or activity.
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"In the future, it [agents] is going to be the only way to search the
Internet, because no matter how much better the Internet may be organised, it can't keep
pace with the growth in information..." |
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| Bob Johnson, analyst at
Dataquest Inc. |
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Using agents when looking for information has certain advantages compared to current methods, such as using a search engine:
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Search Engine feature: |
Improvement(s) Intelligent Software Agents can offer: |
| 1. |
An information search is done, based on one or more
keywords given by a user. This presupposes that the user is capable of formulating the
right set of keywords to retrieve the wanted information. Querying with the wrong, too
many, or too little keywords will cause many irrelevant information ('noise') to
be retrieved or will not retrieve (very) relevant information as it does not contain
these exact keywords; |
Agents are capable of searching information more
intelligently, for instance because tools (such as a thesaurus) enable them to search on
related terms as well, or even on concepts.
Agents will also use these tools to fine-tune, or even correct user queries (on the basis
of a user model, or other user information); |
| 2. |
Information mapping is done by gathering
(meta-)information about information and documents that are available on the Internet.
This is a very time-consuming method that causes a lot of data traffic, it lacks
efficiency (there are a lot of parties that use this method of gathering information, but
they usually do not co-operate with others which means that they are reinventing the
wheel many times), and it does not account very well for the dynamic nature of the
Internet and the information that can be found on it; |
Individual user agents can create their own knowledge
base about available information sources on the Internet, which is updated and expanded
after every search. When information (i.e. documents) have moved to another location,
agents will be able to find them, and update their knowledge base accordingly.
Furthermore, in the future agents will be able to communicate and co-operate with other
agents (such as middle layer agents). This will enable them to
perform tasks, such as information searches, quicker and more efficient, reducing network
traffic. They will also be able to perform tasks (e.g. searches) directly at the
source/service, leading to a further decrease of network traffic; |
| 3. |
The search for information is often limited to a few
Internet services, such as the WWW. Finding information that is offered through other
services (e.g. a 'Telnet-able' database), often means the user is left to his or her own
devices; |
Agents can relief their human user of the need to
worry about "clerical details", such as the way the various Internet service have to
operated. Instead, he or she will only have to worry about the question what
exactly is being sought (instead of worrying about where certain information
may be found or how it should be obtained). The user's agent will worry about the
rest; |
| 4. |
Search engines cannot always be reached: the server
that a service resides on may be 'down', or it may be too busy on the Internet to get a
connection. Regular users of the service will then have to switch to some
other search engine, which probably requires a different way to be operated and
may offer different services; |
As a user agent resides on a user's computer, it is
always available to the user.
An agent can perform one or more tasks day and night, sometimes even in parallel. As
looking for information on the Internet is such a time-consuming activity, having an
agent do this job has many advantages, one of them being that an agent does not mind
doing it continuously. A further advantage of agents is that they can detect and avoid
peak-hours on the Internet; |
| 5. |
Search engines are domain-independent in the way they
treat gathered information and in the way they enable users to search in it.
Terms in gathered documents are lifted out of their context, and are stored as a mere list of individual keywords. A term
like "information broker" is most likely stored as the two separate terms "information"
and "broker" in the meta-information of the document that contains them. Someone
searching for documents about an "information broker" will therefore also get documents
where the words "information" and "broker" are used, but only as separate terms (e.g. as
in "an introductory information text about stock brokers"); |
Software agents will be able to search information
based on contexts. They will deduce this context from user information (i.e. a built-up
user model) or by using other services, such as a thesaurus service.
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| 6. |
The information on Internet is very dynamic: quite
often search engines refer to information that has moved to another, unknown location, or
has disappeared. Search engines do not learn from these searches, and they do not adjust themselves to their
users.
Moreover, a user cannot receive information updates upon one or more topics, i.e. perform
certain searches automatically at regular intervals.
Searching information this way, becomes a very time-consuming activity. |
User agents can adjust themselves to the preferences
and wishes of individual users. Ideally this will lead to agents that will more and more
adjust themselves to what a user wants and wishes, and what he or she is (usually)
looking for, by learning from performed tasks (i.e. searches) and the way users react to
the results of them.
Furthermore, agents are able to continuously scan the Internet for (newly available)
information about topics a user is interested in. |
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