Encyclopedia of Computer Science and Technology

442 software agentLife could be studied to learn how people would be mostlikely to react to a real disease outbreak. And at CarnegieMellon University, a National Science Foundation–fundedproject will be studying interactions in online venues asdisparate as World of Warcraft and Wikipedia.Further ReadingDochartaigh, Niall O. The Internet Research Handbook: A PracticalGuide for Students and Researchers in the Social Sciences.Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage Publications, 2002.Gilbert, Nigel, and Klaus G. Troitzsch. Simulation for the SocialScientist. Philadelphia: Open University Press, 1999.“The Impoverished Social Scientist’s Guide to Free Statistical Softwareand Resources.” Available online. URL: http://www.hmdc.harvard.edu/micah_altman/socsci.shtml. AccessedOctober 5, 2007.Patterson, David A. “Using Spreadsheets for Data Collection, StatisticalAnalysis, and Graphical Representation.” Availableonline. URL: http://web.utk.edu/~dap/Random/Order/Start.htm. Accessed October 5, 2007.Saam, Nicole J., and Bernd Schmidt. Cooperative Agents: Applicationsin the Social Science. Norwell, Mass.: Kluwer AcademicPublishers, 2001.Summary of Survey Analysis Software (Harvard). Available online.URL: http://www.hcp.med.harvard.edu/statistics/survey-soft/.Accessed October 5, 2007.software agentMost software is operated by users giving it commandsto perform specific, short-duration tasks. For example, auser might have a word processor change a word’s typestyleto bold, or reformat a page with narrower margins.On the other hand, a person might give a human assistanthigher-level instructions for an ongoing activity: for example,“Start a clippings file on the new global trade treaty andhow it affects our industry.”In recent years, however, computer scientists and developershave created software that can follow instructionsmore like those given to the human assistant than thosegiven to the word processor. These programs are variouslycalled software agents, intelligent agents, or bots (shortfor “robots”). Some consumers have already used softwareagents to comb the Web for them, looking, for example,for the best online price for a certain model of digital camera.Agent programs can also assist with online auctions,travel planning and booking, and filtering e-mail to removeunwanted “spam” or to direct inquiries to appropriate salesor technical support personnel. (See also Maes, Pattie.)Practical agents or bots can be quite effective, but theyare relatively inflexible and able to cope only with narrowlydefined tasks. A travel planning agent may be able to interfacewith online reservations systems and book airline tickets,for example. However, the agent is unlikely to be able torecognize that a recent upsurge in civil strife suggests thattravel to that particular country is not advisable.Researchers have, however, been working on a varietyof more open-ended agents that, while not demonstrably“intelligent,” do appear to behave intelligently. The first programthat was able to create a humanlike conversation wasELIZA. Written in the mid-1960s by Joseph Weizenbaum,ELIZA simulated a conversation with a “nondirective” psychotherapist.More recently, Internet “chatterbots” such asone called Julia have been able to carry on apparently intelligentconversations in IRC (Internet Relay Chat) rooms,complete with flirting. Other “social bots” have served asplayers in online games (see chatterbots).Chatterbots are effective because they can mirror humansocial conventions and because much of casual humanconversation contains stereotyped phrases or clichés thatcan be easily imitated. Ideally, however, one would wantbots to be able to combine the ability to carry out practicaltasks with a more general intelligence and a more “sociable”interface. This requires that the bot have an extensiveknowledge base (see knowledge representation) and agreater ability to understand human language (see linguisticsand computing). Small strides have been made inproviding online help systems that can deal with naturallanguage questions, as well as being able to interactivelyhelp users step through a particular tasks.Agents or bots have also suggested a new paradigm fororganizing programs. Currently, the most widely acceptedparadigm treats a program as a collection of objects withdefined capabilities that respond to “messages” asking forservices (see object-oriented programming). A move to“agent-oriented programming” would carry this evolution astep further. Such a program would not simply have objectsthat wait passively for requests. Rather, it would have multipleagents that are given ongoing tasks, priorities, or goals.One approach is to allow the agents to negotiate with oneanother or to put tasks “up for bid,” letting agents thathave the appropriate ability contract to perform the task.With each task having a certain amount of “money” (ultimatelyrepresenting resources) available, the negotiationmodel would ideally result in the most efficient utilizationof resources.If Marvin Minsky’s (see Minsky, Marvin) “society ofmind” theory is correct and the human brain actually containsmany cooperating “agents,” then it is possible thatsystems of competing and/or cooperating agents mighteventually allow for the emergence of a true artificial intelligence.In the future, agents are likely to become more capableof understanding and carrying out high-level requestswhile enjoying a great deal of autonomy. Some possibleapplication areas include data mining, marketing and surveyresearch, intelligent Web searching, security, and intelligencegathering. However, autonomy may cause problemsif agents get out of control or exhibit viruslike behavior.Further ReadingDenison, D. C. “Guess Who’s Smarter.” Boston Globe, May 26,2003, p. D1. Available online. URL: http://web.media.mit.edu/~lieber/Press/Globe-Common-Sense.html. Accessed August21, 2007.D’Inverno, Mark, and Michael Luck. Understanding Agent Systems.2nd ed. New York: Springer, 2004.Lieberman, H., et al. “Commonsense on the Go: Giving MobileApplications an Understanding of Everyday Life.” Availableonline. URL: http://agents.media.mit.edu/projects/mobile/BT-Commonsense_on_the_Go.pdf. Accessed August 21, 2007.