Intelligent agent stakes for e-commerce

The transformations of the business environment have led to the emergence of new business reality. Business processes are dynamic as never before. Solely participants able to take snap decisions have a chance to survive and, what is more important, generate some benefits. Moreover, the pressure to apply IT solutions forces companies to permanent search for the state-of-the-art technologies. It becomes, thus, necessary to support business processes with a tool that is able to inform, co-operate, act fast as well as replace a human in many business situations. Artificial intelligence (AI) based systems constitute the solution fulfilling such requirements. Quite recently AI started playing significant role in e-commerce world. Its new form is not the monolithic system of the past, but distributed artificial intelligence, known as intelligent agent technology. This technology is the next step in dealing with some shortcomings in e-commerce. However, successful computer systems underlying e-commerce require judgement and the knowledge of experts such as buyers, contract negotiators as well as marketing specialists.