What we talk about when we talk about software agents

There is so much talk these days about software agents, and close relatives with names such as softbots, knobots, and interface agents, that we are reminded of the early days of AI. The ideas are creative, early-stage, and all over the map. At Stanford University alone you will find agents that sort your mail, adaptively recommend Web pages, assist with scheduling, find people with interests similar to your own, translate between different knowledge bases, and have individual electronic personality and graphical depiction. Elsewhere, you can also find agents that help manage your network, shop for you, migrate in the network, have a natural-language understanding capability, and much more. The author discusses some of the properties that characterize software agents