B2B Integration : A Practical Guide to Collaborative E-commerce

13.5. Agents and Autonomy
Software Agents 387
Intelligence is based on autonomy. Autonomy refers to the ability of
agents to take initiative, operate on their own and exercise some level
of restraint and control on their own actions. Autonomy of the agents is
driven by the following traits:
• Goal-oriented — Autonomy is directly linked to the goal-oriented
nature of agents. They should be able to learn and identify human
needs and be responsible for pursuing a course of action to satisfy
those needs.
• Pro-activeness — Agents should act on their own instantaneously if
and when they detect a change in their environment. This action
should be chosen dynamically, based on the change. To do so, they
would have to learn as they react and interact with their external
environment.
Effective adjustable autonomy minimizes the necessity for human
interaction, but maximizes the capability for humans to interact at
whatever level of control is most appropriate for any situation at any
time.
From the perspective of B2B e-commerce, adjustable autonomy
(i.e., dynamically adjusting the level of autonomy of an agent) fits more
as of the moment. There are several critical decisions that are involved
in completing a B2B transaction successfully. With the given level of
agent intelligence, humans should be involved at some level, based on
the situation, to complete the transaction.
13.6. Multi-Agent Environment
A multi-agent environment consists of cooperating intelligent agents.
In a multi-agent environment, there are multiple agents with different
owners, users, skills, intelligence, constraints and governing rules. Agents
in such systems have to interact, either in a selfish or cooperative way,
both with associated users and other agents in their environments. The
working of such environments is viable only with the coordination of
the activities of multiple agents. Agents can develop the coordination
strategies through learning and adaptation.