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229
Software agents: An overview
- Knowledge Engineering Review
, 1996
"... Agent software is a rapidly developing area of research. However, the overuse of the word ‘agent ’ has tended to mask the fact that, in reality, there is a truly heterogeneous body of research being carried out under this banner. This overview paper presents a typology of agents. Next, it places age ..."
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Cited by 418 (5 self)
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Agent software is a rapidly developing area of research. However, the overuse of the word ‘agent ’ has tended to mask the fact that, in reality, there is a truly heterogeneous body of research being carried out under this banner. This overview paper presents a typology of agents. Next, it places agents in context, defines them and then goes on, inter alia, to overview critically the rationales, hypotheses, goals, challenges and state-of-the-art demonstrators of the various agent types in our typology. Hence, it attempts to make explicit much of what is usually implicit in the agents literature. It also proceeds to overview some other general issues which pertain to all the types of agents in the typology. This paper largely reviews software agents, and it also contains some strong opinions that are not necessarily widely accepted by the agent community. 1 1
Kasbah: an agent marketplace for buying and selling goods,
- Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on the Practical Application of Intelligent Agents and Multi-Agent Technology,
, 1996
"... Abstract While there are many Web services which help users find things to buy, we know of none which actually try to automate the process of buying and selling. Kasbah is a system where users create autonomous agents to buy and sell goods on their behalf. In this paper, we describe how Kasbah work ..."
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Cited by 386 (6 self)
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Abstract While there are many Web services which help users find things to buy, we know of none which actually try to automate the process of buying and selling. Kasbah is a system where users create autonomous agents to buy and sell goods on their behalf. In this paper, we describe how Kasbah works. We also discuss the implementation of a simple proof-of-concept prototype.
CP-nets: A Tool for Representing and Reasoning with Conditional Ceteris Paribus Preference Statements
- JOURNAL OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE RESEARCH
, 2004
"... Information about user preferences plays a key role in automated decision making. In many domains it is desirable to assess such preferences in a qualitative rather than quantitative way. In this paper, we propose a qualitative graphical representation of preferences that reflects conditional dep ..."
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Cited by 317 (4 self)
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Information about user preferences plays a key role in automated decision making. In many domains it is desirable to assess such preferences in a qualitative rather than quantitative way. In this paper, we propose a qualitative graphical representation of preferences that reflects conditional dependence and independence of preference statements under a ceteris paribus (all else being equal) interpretation. Such a representation is often compact and arguably quite natural in many circumstances. We provide a formal semantics for this model, and describe how the structure of the network can be exploited in several inference tasks, such as determining whether one outcome dominates (is preferred to) another, ordering a set outcomes according to the preference relation, and constructing the best outcome subject to available evidence.
A Meta-Model for the Analysis and Design of Organizations in Multi-Agent Systems
, 1998
"... This paper presents a generic meta-model of multi-agent systems based on organizational concepts such as groups, roles and structures. This model, called AALAADIN, defines a very simple description of coordination and negotiation schemes through multi-agent systems. Aalaadin is a meta-model of artif ..."
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Cited by 227 (11 self)
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This paper presents a generic meta-model of multi-agent systems based on organizational concepts such as groups, roles and structures. This model, called AALAADIN, defines a very simple description of coordination and negotiation schemes through multi-agent systems. Aalaadin is a meta-model of artificial organization by which one can build multi-agent systems with different forms of organizations such as market-like and hierarchical organizations. We show that this meta-model allows for agent heterogeneity in languages, applications and architectures. We also introduce the concept of organizational reflection which uses the same conceptual model to describe systemlevel tasks such as remote communication and migration of agents. Finally, we briefly describe a platform, called MADKIT, based on this model. It relies on a minimal agent kernel with platform-level services implemented as agents, groups and roles. 1 Introduction Whereas organization has been presented as a major issue of m...
Computing and Applying Trust in Web-based Social Networks
, 2005
"... The proliferation of web-based social networks has lead to new innovations in social networking, particularly by allowing users to describe their relationships beyond a basic connection. In this dissertation, I look specifically at trust in web-based social networks, how it can be computed, and how ..."
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Cited by 205 (16 self)
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The proliferation of web-based social networks has lead to new innovations in social networking, particularly by allowing users to describe their relationships beyond a basic connection. In this dissertation, I look specifically at trust in web-based social networks, how it can be computed, and how it can be used in applications. I begin with a definition of trust and a description of several properties that affect how it is used in algorithms. This is complemented by a survey of web-based social networks to gain an understanding of their scope, the types of relationship information available, and the current state of trust. The computational problem of trust is to determine how much one person in the network should trust another person to whom they are not connected. I present two sets of algorithms for calculating these trust inferences: one for networks with binary trust ratings, and one for continuous ratings. For each rating scheme, the algorithms are built upon the defined notions of trust. Each is then analyzed theoretically and with respect to simulated and actual trust networks to determine how accurately they calculate the opinions of people in the system. I show that in both rating schemes the algorithms
Review on Computational Trust and Reputation Models
- Artificial Intelligence Review (2005
, 2005
"... Abstract. The scientific research in the area of computational mechanisms for trust and reputation in virtual societies is a recent discipline oriented to increase the reli-ability and performance of electronic communities. Computer science has moved from the paradigm of isolated machines to the par ..."
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Cited by 195 (0 self)
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Abstract. The scientific research in the area of computational mechanisms for trust and reputation in virtual societies is a recent discipline oriented to increase the reli-ability and performance of electronic communities. Computer science has moved from the paradigm of isolated machines to the paradigm of networks and distributed com-puting. Likewise, artificial intelligence is quickly moving from the paradigm of iso-lated and non-situated intelligence to the paradigm of situated, social and collective intelligence. The new paradigm of the so called intelligent or autonomous agents and multi-agent systems (MAS) together with the spectacular emergence of the informa-tion society technologies (specially reflected by the popularization of electronic com-merce) are responsible for the increasing interest on trust and reputation mechanisms applied to electronic societies. This review wants to offer a panoramic view on current computational trust and reputation models.
Learning Information Retrieval Agents: Experiments with Automated Web Browsing
, 1995
"... The current exponential growth of the Internet precipitates a need for new tools to help people cope with the volume of information. To complement recent work on creating searchable indexes of the World-Wide Web and systems for filtering incoming e-mail and Usenet news articles, we describe a system ..."
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Cited by 139 (3 self)
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The current exponential growth of the Internet precipitates a need for new tools to help people cope with the volume of information. To complement recent work on creating searchable indexes of the World-Wide Web and systems for filtering incoming e-mail and Usenet news articles, we describe a system which helps users keep abreast of new and interesting information. Every day it presents a selection of interesting web pages. The user evaluates each page, and given this feedback the system adapts and attempts to produce better pages the following day. We present some early results from an AI programming class to whom this was set as a project, and then describe our current implementation. Over the course of 24 days the output of our system was compared to both randomly-selected and human-selected pages. It consistently performed better than the random pages, and was better than the human-selected pages half of the time. Introduction In recent years there has been a well-publicized expl...
Reasoning with conditional ceteris paribus preference statements
- In Proceedings of the Fifteenth Conference on Uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence
, 1999
"... In many domains it is desirable to assess the preferences of users in a qualitative rather than quantitative way. Such representations of qualitative preference orderings form an important component of automated decision tools. We propose a graphical representation of preferences that reflects condi ..."
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Cited by 135 (16 self)
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In many domains it is desirable to assess the preferences of users in a qualitative rather than quantitative way. Such representations of qualitative preference orderings form an important component of automated decision tools. We propose a graphical representation of preferences that reflects conditional dependence and independence of preference statements under a ceteris paribus (all else being equal) interpretation. Such a representation is often compact and arguably natural. We describe several search algorithms for dominance testing based on this representation; these algorithms are quite effective, especially in specific network topologies, such as chain- and treestructured networks, as well as polytrees. 1
Yenta: A multi-agent, referral-based matchmaking system
- Proceedings of the First International Conference on Autonomous Agents (Agents'97), 301--307
, 1997
"... Many important and useful applications for software agents require multiple agents on a network that communicate with each other. Such agents must find each other and perform a useful joint computation without having to know about every other such agent on the network. As an example, this paper desc ..."
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Cited by 124 (1 self)
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Many important and useful applications for software agents require multiple agents on a network that communicate with each other. Such agents must find each other and perform a useful joint computation without having to know about every other such agent on the network. As an example, this paper describes a matchmaker system, designed to find people with similar interests and introduce them to each other. The matchmaker is designed to introduce everyone, unlike conventional Internet media which only allow those who take the time to speak in public to be known. The paper details how the agents that make up the matchmaking system can function in a decentralized fashion, yet group themselves into clusters which reflect their users ’ interests; these clusters are then used to make introductions or allow users to send messages to others who share their interests. The algorithm uses referrals from one agent to another in the same fashion that word-of-mouth is used when people are looking for an expert. Several prototypes of various parts of the system have been implemented, and the most recent results, including simulations of up to 1000 such agents, are presented.
The Scope and Importance of Human Interruption In Human-Computer . . .
- HUMAN-COMPUTER INTERACTION
, 2002
"... At first glance it seems absurd that busy people doing important jobs should want their computers to interrupt them. Interruptions are disruptive and people need to concentrate to make good decisions. However, successful job performance also frequently depends on people's abilities to (a) const ..."
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Cited by 110 (1 self)
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At first glance it seems absurd that busy people doing important jobs should want their computers to interrupt them. Interruptions are disruptive and people need to concentrate to make good decisions. However, successful job performance also frequently depends on people's abilities to (a) constantly monitor their dynamically changing information environments, (b) collaborate and communicate with other people in the system, and (c) supervise background autonomous services. These critical abilities can require people to simultaneously query a large set of information sources, continuously monitor for important events, and respond to and communicate with other human operators. Automated monitoring
