Software Agents isn't packed with sample code or programming tips. Instead, it contains a thought-provoking series of essays by industry luminaries on a hot topic at the horizon of programming: building "intelligent" agents. The book's various authors explore different aspects of agents: How will they interact with users? How will they communicate with each other? What are the technical requirements of agents? What kinds of agents have been implemented to date, and what does the future hold? Can agents be built to allow programming of their behavior without requiring any explicit programming? Plentiful food for thought.
Product Description
Future software will not merely respond to requests for information, but will anticipate the user's needs and actively seek ways to support the user. These systems will also manage cooperation among distributed programs. To describe the many roles of such software, researchers use the term agent.
The essays in Software Agents, by leading researchers and developers of agent-based systems, address both the state-of-the-art of agent technology and its likely evolution in the near future. The introductory chapters in Part I present the views of proponents and a critic of software agents. The chapters in Part II describe how agents are used to enhance learning and provide intelligent assistance to users in situations where traditional direct manipulation interfaces alone are insufficient. The chapters of Part III discuss agent-to-agent communication and the use of agents to provide intelligent interoperability in distributed systems and the Internet.
Contributors: José-Luis Ambite, Ball, P. Benoit, Guy A. Boy, Jeffrey M. Bradshaw, Philip Cohen, Allen Cypher, S. Dutfield, Thomas Erickson, Tim Finin, Michael R. Genesereth, Kenneth R. Grant, Craig A. Knoblock, Kurlander, Yannis Labrou, Kum-Yew Lai, Brenda Laurel, Hector J. Levesque, Ling, Pattie Maes, Thomas W. Malone, James Mayfield, Miller, Nicholas Negroponte, Donald A. Norman, Pugh, Doug Riecken, Ben Shneiderman, Yoav Shoham, Skelly, David C. Smith, Jim Spohrer, Stankosky, Thiel, Van Dantzich, Wax, James E. White, J. Woolley.
Distributed for AAAI Press.
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