Intelligent Agents on the Internet: Fact, Fiction, and Forecast

Computer technology has dramatically enhanced our ability to generate, deliver, and store information. Unfortunately, our tools for locating, ltering, and analyzing information have not kept pace. A popular solution is intelligent agents. But what are they? We provide a survey showing the myriad ways in which the evocative term \agent" is interpreted by researchers in the eld. Following the \Information Superhighway" metaphor, an intelligent agent may be: A backseat driver who makes suggestions at every turn, or A taxi driver who drives you to your destination, or even A concierge whose knowledge and skills eliminate the need to personally approach the Superhighway at all. We brie y describe a number of prototype Internet agents and elaborate on the Internet Softbot, a concierge under development at the University of Washington. This research was funded in part by O ce of Naval Research Grants N00014-94-1-0060 and 92J-1946, and by National Science Foundation grants IRI-9357772 and IRI-9303461. We acknowledge the members of the Internet Softbot group at the University of Washington: Tony Barrett, David Christianson, Terrance Goan, Keith Golden, Cody Kwok, Neal Lesh, Sujay Parekh, Mike Perkowitz, Richard Segal, Erik Selberg, and Ying Sun. \The most profound technologies are those that disappear." | Mark Weiser [18]