Agent Technology could help us carry out many of life's tasks with
little effort, but will it ever come out of the dark?
The principle behind Agent Technology is, in essence, replacing
the current human agents that everyone employs from time to time,
such as estate or travel agents. Agent Technology can act as a
middleman between the purchaser of a product or service and the
provider - finding the best deal and organising necessary financial
transactions. This idea is still a long way from bearing fruit and
the mechanisms on how to get there are still being decided. But
even so, there are still many questions that are raised by this
kind of technology.
Dr Bent Thomsen, principal researcher and engineer for ICL said:
"Agents can do many things. They can watch and inform you of
certain events, such as the arrival time of planes; they can search
to find you the best price on a given product; and they can
orchestrate numerous events, such as arranging a romantic night out
for your partner."There are three types of agent under discussion:
intelligent agents, multi-agents and mobile agents. Intelligent
agents react and make decisions based on a set of beliefs they
have. In this way they can offer advice, such as what kind of
mortgage you should purchase, or take on a planning role, advising
and helping the user on numerous other tasks that need to be
completed in order to achieve the initial goal. Multi-agents rely
on the expertise of a range of other agents to solve any given
problem. Taking the advice of each individual expert, it can then
condense the information into a correct solution. Mobile agents are
pieces of code that will actually be able to leave a user's system
and move across the Internet finding answers to problems before
returning.Unfortunately, mobile agents have numerous problems to
overcome that may lead to the technology never seeing the light of
day. Most of all, while the spread of the Internet has enabled
mobile agents to be an actual possibility, it has also essentially
removed the need for them. There is no need to send what many call
a "benign virus" out over the Internet when the information can
just as easily be drawn from the Web without the agent ever having
to leave the user's system.But it's not just mobile agents that
have problems to deal with; there are serious fundamental issues to
be addressed before agents will achieve any widespread appeal.
Agents have to act with a great deal of autonomy, otherwise they
will cause more problems than they solve. To do this they need to
collect a great deal of information on the user's personal
preferences, which can be obtained from direct questioning or from
studying the behaviour of the said user.Either way, this involves
the user placing a great deal of trust in the agent that the
information will not be passed on to other sources. At the moment
there is still a big question mark in many people's minds over
purchasing goods over the Web. Even though it is much safer than
many other methods, passing credit card details over the Internet
is still perceived by many to be an immense risk due to hacker
threat or careless company security. To then hand your credit card
details to an autonomous software agent who will go and make
purchasing decisions on your behalf takes a great leap of faith. It
will be up to the vendors to prove that this can be a safe method
of transaction. The same can be said of holding personal
information - if that falls into unsafe hands, there could be
problems. ICL has stated that this type of agent is not yet safe to
be let out onto the Internet, although it believes such an agent
could operate safely within an intranet environment.We can already
experience some forms of agent-type technology on the Web.
Intelligent search engines that can provide you with the best
available answer from natural language questions, such as Ask
Jeeves (www.ask.co.uk), are out there already. Agent Technology is
only just reaching this stage. ICL showed a product that could
advise the user on the best type of mortgage for them through a
spoken word interaction. The demo was impressive, but the product
isn't likely to see the light of day until next year when it could
be used on a financial advice website. Yet, finding the best
mortgage on the Internet isn't an impossible task right now
although current systems are rule-based and have no degree of
autonomy.This is another problem that Agent Technology faces. It is
still some way off full implementation and acceptance into the
market. Yet, at the same time, there are continuing advancements in
software that offer similar services to those that agents will be
able to provide. While not Agent Technology in the true sense, its
perception to the public will be the same and may be more
reassuring than the idea of an autonomous piece of code potentially
running riot on their behalf. While this could lead to true Agent
Technology remaining constantly behind the leading edge and never
being truly adopted, it is not something in principle that concerns
ICL. "We are looking to the future and saying 'Wouldn't it be
wonderful if we could do all these things?'", said Thomsen.
"Whether it is Agent Technology or a development of current
technology is neither here nor there - as long as it can do the
things we all want it to."
Paul Grant