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

• Authors: Oren Etzioni;Daniel S. Weld
• Venue: IEEE Expert: Intelligent Systems and Their Applications
• Year: 1995

In the future, intelligent software agents will help us navigatethe information superhighway by serving as backseat drivers or taxidrivers. Better yet, they have the potential to act assophisticated concierges who make it unnecessary for us to approachthe highway at all."The most profound technologies are those that disappear."-MarkWeiserElectric motors have exerted a dramatic influence on ourlifestyle. There are, for example, more than twenty such machinesin the average American home. But most people don't notice electricmotors in daily life; instead, they focus on the activities thedevices enable: washing clothes or listening to a CD. Similarly,computer technology has dramatically enhanced our ability togenerate, deliver, and store information. Unfortunately, our toolsfor locating, filtering, and analyzing that information have notkept pace. Consequently, instead of "disappearing" like electricmotors, the "information superhighway" looms larger and moreprominent in the lives of its users every day. Intelligent softwareagents can reverse this trend.Such agents have two ways of making the information superhighwaydisappear:Abstraction: Details of the technology underlying the agent andthe resources the agent accesses are "abstracted" away-that is,they are user-transparent. The agent enables a person to state whatinformation he or she requires; the agent determines where to findthe information and how to retrieve it.Dstraction: The agent's character or persona helps distract theperson from what might be a tedious or complex task.Forecast: While cute agent personalities will have tremendousimpact in the entertainment market, people will not appreciate themin operating systems, utilities, or business applications.Microsoft's "Bob" will become extinct for the same reason thatconsumers rejected talking cars.For intelligent software agents, we believe that abstractionwill win out over distraction. The pervasive interaction style fortoday's computers is direct manipulation: the user clicks on,drags, and drops icons. Although direct manipulation is handy forperforming simple tasks such as printing files or invokingapplications on a personal computer, it does not scale to searchingmassive networks for information. Many visionaries recognize thispoint. Alan Kay writes:A retrieval "tool" won't do because no one wants to spend hourslooking through hundreds of networks with trillions of potentiallyuseful items. This is a job for intelligent background processesthat can successfully clone their users' goals and then carry themout. Here we want to indirectly manage agents, not directlymanipulate objects. (p. 203)Nicholas Negroponte uses the task of making one's bed as anillustration:Today, notwithstanding the skill, I cherish the opportunity ofdelegating the task and have little interest in the directmanipulation of my bedsheets(. Likewise, I feel no imperatives tomanage my computer files, route my telecommunications, or filterthe onslaught of mail messages, news, and the like. I am fullyprepared to delegate these tasks to agents I trust as I tend toother matters...(p. 347)Facts: The Information and Interactive Services Report statesthat more than 10,000 people are signing up for on-line informationservices each day (New York Times, April 9, 1995). The InternetSociety estimates that more than 30 million people worldwide haveaccess to the Internet on any given day (New York Times, May 11,1995).Both Negroponte and Kay suggest that direct manipulation isappropriate for enjoyable tasks. Although some people enjoybrowsing Internet content, most people would gladly delegatetedious tasks such as searching for information on the Internet toa competent agent.Fact: There are at least 1,500 general-purposeinformation-finding services (staffed by human information brokers)currently doing business nationwide (Harvard Magazine, May-June,1995, p. 23).