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From: m.wooldridge@doc.mmu.ac.uk (Michael Wooldrige)
Subject: Re: "Intelligent Agents"
Message-ID: <AG71BRSG@DBresearch-berlin.de>
Sender: mikew@cs.tu-berlin.de (Michael Wooldrige)
Nntp-Posting-Host: bancha
Organization: Manchester Metropolitan University
References:  <Pine.SUN.3.91.950617232030.753A-100000@oacs>
Date: Wed, 21 Jun 1995 11:33:49 GMT
Lines: 51

"James P. Lynch III" <jlynch@oacs.nswc.navy.mil> writes:
> Hello.  Looking for a discussion on the subject. What are the 
> characteristics of an 'intelligent agent?'  Is there a recognized 
> definition of the term?  What are the measures of effectiveness of such 
> an entity? 

There isn't any recognised definition: the answer you get depends upon who you 
ask. If, for example, you asked Yoav Shoham (well known agent guru) this question 
about 3 years ago, he would probably have told you that an agent was a 
system whose state may be characterised in terms of mentalistic constructs
such as belief, commitment, and choice. If you ask General Magic, the 
developers of the Telescript agent programming language, they might
tell you that an agent is an interpreted computer program (script), that
may be sent across the net. Pattie Maes (another agent guru) would probably 
give you a different answer. In a paper due to appear in Knowledge Engineering
Review very shortly, (this month I think), Nick Jennings and I try to make
sense of the various different ways that agency is treated in AI. The paper
includes about 200 references, and is available from:

	http://www.doc.mmu.ac.uk/STAFF/mike/ker95.ps

You might also want to take a look at a book that I was involved in editing:

	`Intelligent Agents --- Theories, Architectures, and Languages'
	Edited by Michael Wooldridge and Nicholas R. Jennings
	Published by Springer-Verlag as Volume 890
	of Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence,
	1995

Full details on the book are available at:

	http://www.doc.mmu.ac.uk/STAFF/mike/atal94.html

A workshop on intelligent agents is being held at IJCAI-95. Details at:

	http://www.doc.mmu.ac.uk/STAFF/mike/atal95.html

Finally, the First International Conference on Multi-Agent Systems was held 
in San Francisco this month; you might want to check out the proceedings,
published by AAAI Press/MIT Press. There are lots of interesting papers in
there.

Hope this helps.

Mike
-- 
Michael Wooldridge                 | email M.Wooldridge@doc.mmu.ac.uk
Department of Computing            | http://www.doc.mmu.ac.uk/STAFF/mikew.html
Manchester Metropolitan University | tel  (+44 161) 247 1531 
Chester St., Manchester M1 5GD, UK | fax  (+44 161) 247 1483
>>>>>> Until 21 July 1995, a visiting researcher at Daimler-Benz Berlin <<<<<<
