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"Human speech is like a cracked kettle
on which we hammer out tunes to make bears dance,
when what we long for is the compassion of the stars."
-- Gustave Flaubert, 1857

THIS ISSUE

Volume 1, Number 9
July 6, 1996
Baltimore, MD
http://www.cs.umbc.edu/agents/agentnews/1996/09/
Modified Wednesday, 17-Jul-1996 19:04:18 EDT

AGENT TECHNOLOGY

IBM releases AgentBuilder toolkit based on RAISE
IBM has released an alpha version of AgentBuilder, a developer's toolkit for building agent-based systems. The OS/2 version is currently available for download over the Internet. AgentBuilder is based in great part on the research version of the RAISE (Reusable Agent Intelligence Software Environment) class library developed at IBM's T.J. Watson Research Center by Benjamin Grosof, David W. Levine, Hoi Y. Chan, and others.

Generic Knowledge Base Editor available from SRI
SRI is making availability their Generic Knowledge Base Editor (GKB-Editor) -- a free tool for graphically browsing and editing knowledge bases across multiple frame representation systems in a uniform manner. It offers an intuitive user interface, in which objects and data items are represented as nodes in a graph, with the relationships between them forming the edges. Users edit a KB through direct pictorial manipulation using the mouse. A sophisticated incremental browsing facility allows the user to selectively display only that region of a KB that is currently of interest, even as that region changes. GKB-Editor runs on Sun workstations and requires Common Lisp and CLIM (Allegro or Lucid).

Jess is CLIPS in Java
Jess is a clone of the core of the CLIPS expert system shell written by Ernest Friedman-Hill at Sandia National Laboratories in Livermore, CA. Jess contains only the essential features of CLIPS, and leaves out a lot (e.g., COOL) but it is a powerful, fast, and efficient tool with many applications. Jess is downward compatible with CLIPS, in that every valid Jess script is a valid CLIPS script. Like CLIPS, Jess uses the Rete algorithm to process rules, a very efficient mechanism for solving the difficult many-to-many matching problem.

NEW AGENTS ON THE NET

Ahoy! is a better homepage finder
Ahoy! is a free World Wide Web service developed at the University of Washington that is designed to help find the home pages of individual people on the Web. It uses Metacrawler to create a large list of candidate web pages and then employs various techniques to weed out the least promising ones, leaving you with a manageable number of choices. The effect of this "information filtering" is that the search can proceed more quickly.

IBM's Webbie is a personal web assistant agent
IBM has released an alpha version (OS/2 and Win95) of the WBI (for "Web Browser Intelligence" aka "Webbie") agent which acts as a WWW proxy between your browser and the rest of the Web. WBI can remember wherever you've been on the web, what you found there, and can help you recall any word on any page that you've visited. It can alert you, before you go to a page, whether the site is not available or the access time will be slow and helps you navigate more productively through the web by learning your preferences and patterns for searching for information. WBI can also alert you if a page you have an interest in has had a content change.

AGENT PROJECTS AND GROUPS

Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
The DESIRE research at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam focuses on the study of compositional multi-agent systems for complex (and often distributed) tasks and development methods for these systems. Such systems model and support users in coordinating and performing complex cooperative tasks (e.g., design projects, distributed process control). The agent metaphor has been adopted as a point of departure: a complex task can be modeled as a composition of a number of tasks, each of which is performed by one or more agents; these agents can have the form of automated systems or human agents (users). The group has developed an agent modeling framework that addresses three major aspects underlying an agent solving a complex task: the different types of knowledge required, the patterns of reasoning and acting used by the agents, and the interactions between (automated) systems and users.

Web's Magical Music Engine
The Similarities Engine is another web-based music recommending system developed by David Whiteis (WhiteisD@ari.net). Its database has been built up over the past year with input from over 18,000 informants. The Similarities Engine was featured in a recent NYT article The Web's Magical Music Engine (ARTS@LARGE / By Matthew Mirapaul).

AGENT BUSINESS

Yahoo! and Agents Inc. to team for personalized navigation
Yahoo! and Agents Inc. announced a strategic partnership to collaborate to produce a firefly-like service for Web sites. "The degree of information overload on the Web today has no historical precedent," said Nick Grouf, CEO of Agents Inc. "The combination of firefly and Yahoo! will offer Web surfers today and in the future a unique navigational tool to harness the full potential of the Web." ( More info).

WebWhacker off-line browser incorporates "wizards"
Forefront is a Houston company started by AI researcher Dr. G. Anthony Gorry (known for his work applying AI to medical problems) that is marketing several advanced web-based tools. WebWhacker, their latest and most interesting tool, is an "off line" web browser for Windows95 and NT. "By preselecting the Web sites that they want to monitor, users can set a schedule for Web pages, text, graphics and HTML links to be delivered to their desktop computers automatically and unattended. Powerful Wizards walk users through the automation process, requesting that they make only four simple decisions: what Web sites they want monitored, how the selected sites will be categorized, how much of a given site will be retrieved, and how often the content will be updated."

AGENT PAPERS

Intelligent Integration of Information
Kluwer is making the double issue on `Intelligent Integration of Information' of the Journal on Intelligent Information Systems (Vol.6, ns. 2-3) available in book form. See -- Wiederhold, Gio (editor): Intelligent Integration of Information (summary); Kluwer Academic Publishers, Boston MA, July 1996. (Foreword); (Glossary);

On Partially Controlled Multi-Agent Systems
Brafman, R.I. and Tennenholtz, M. (1996), "On Partially Controlled Multi-Agent Systems", JAIR, Volume 4, pages 477-507. Available as brafman96a.ps (356K) or brafman96a.ps.Z (146K). Abstract: Motivated by the control theoretic distinction between controllable and uncontrollable events, we distinguish between two types of agents within a multi-agent system: controllable agents, which are directly controlled by the system's designer, and uncontrollable agents, which are not under the designer's direct control. We refer to such systems as partially controlled multi-agent systems, and we investigate how one might influence the behavior of the uncontrolled agents through appropriate design of the controlled agents. In particular, we wish to understand which problems are naturally described in these terms, what methods can be applied to influence the uncontrollable agents, the effectiveness of such methods, and whether similar methods work across different domains. Using a game-theoretic framework, this paper studies the design of partially controlled multi-agent systems in two contexts: in one context, the uncontrollable agents are expected utility maximizers, while in the other they are reinforcement learners. We suggest different techniques for controlling agents' behavior in each domain, assess their success, and examine their relationship.

Java in MCC's Infosleuth
Nigel Jacobs and Ray Shea, The Role of Java in InfoSleuth: Agent-based Exploitation of Heterogeneous Information Resources, Microeclectronics and Computer Technology Corporation (MCC), Austin, Texas, 1996. Abstract: "...InfoSleuth is a consortial research project at MCC which is developing technologies for addressing these issues. Based on MCC's successful Carnot project, InfoSleuth is developing a network of semi-autonomous software agents which perform semantic data integration and retrieval across a widely distributed network environment. To achieve this, the project employs recent advances in ontology management, data mining, workflow automation, object brokering and language translation. The InfoSleuth architecture consists of agents communicating with each other via the high-level language KQML. Queries are specified in the flexible knowledge representation language KIF, with respect to common ontologies that are managed in knowledge-base management systems such as Ontolingua and CLIPS. The queries are routed by mediation and brokerage agents to specialized agents for data retrieval from distributed resources, and for integration and analysis of results. User interaction with this web of agents is via a personalized intelligent user agent which communicates with the user via Java applets running inside a Java-capable Web browser such as Netscape."

AGENT EVENTS

Intelligence in Services and Networks
IS&N'97, Fourth International Conference on Intelligence in Services and Networks "Technology for Cooperative Competition". Como, Italy May 27-29, 1997. Extended abstracts due 31 Oct. 1996. More information is available.

Conference on Coordination Models and Languages
COORDINATION'97, the Second International Conference on Coordination Models and Languages, will be held in Berlin, Germany on September 1-3, 1997. Papers due January 24, 1997. There will be a co-located industrial case study workshop to present and compare approaches to coordination and software architecture.

Design of intelligent multi-agent systems
The Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam AI group will offer a 5-day postgraduate course on the design of multi-agent systems on October 16-22, 1996. This course, Design of Intelligent Multi-Agent Systems, will use the DESIRE agent modeling framework. Course material and instructions will be in English. The course fee is 1750 ECU and must be received by September 16, 1996.

AGENTNEWS NEWS

Stupid agent tricks
C.J. Cherryh, The KIF Strike Back, Phantasia ltd ed, 1985; DAW Books, 1985; SFBC, 1986. Abstract: "In Compact Space, where some seven species have staked out their often-disputed interstellar frontiers, events move with speed, surprise and a tendency to escalate into shattering violence. Confrontation is routine and treachery, to some, is a way of life. So when the kif seized a hani and a human, the gauntlet was down. Pyanfar Chanur was not one to ignore such a challenge. But what she saw as a simple rescue attempt soon became the deadliest game that even she, controversial captain, no stranger to battle and desperate risk, had ever been engaged in." For related information, see "The History and Development of KIF Writing".

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THIS ISSUE
Volume 1, Number 9 July 6, 1996 Baltimore, MD	http://www.cs.umbc.edu/agents/agentnews/1996/09/ Modified Wednesday, 17-Jul-1996 19:04:18 EDT
AGENT TECHNOLOGY
IBM releases AgentBuilder toolkit based on RAISE	IBM has released an alpha version of AgentBuilder, a developer's toolkit for building agent-based systems. The OS/2 version is currently available for download over the Internet. AgentBuilder is based in great part on the research version of the RAISE (Reusable Agent Intelligence Software Environment) class library developed at IBM's T.J. Watson Research Center by Benjamin Grosof, David W. Levine, Hoi Y. Chan, and others.
Generic Knowledge Base Editor available from SRI	SRI is making availability their Generic Knowledge Base Editor (GKB-Editor) -- a free tool for graphically browsing and editing knowledge bases across multiple frame representation systems in a uniform manner. It offers an intuitive user interface, in which objects and data items are represented as nodes in a graph, with the relationships between them forming the edges. Users edit a KB through direct pictorial manipulation using the mouse. A sophisticated incremental browsing facility allows the user to selectively display only that region of a KB that is currently of interest, even as that region changes. GKB-Editor runs on Sun workstations and requires Common Lisp and CLIM (Allegro or Lucid).
Jess is CLIPS in Java	Jess is a clone of the core of the CLIPS expert system shell written by Ernest Friedman-Hill at Sandia National Laboratories in Livermore, CA. Jess contains only the essential features of CLIPS, and leaves out a lot (e.g., COOL) but it is a powerful, fast, and efficient tool with many applications. Jess is downward compatible with CLIPS, in that every valid Jess script is a valid CLIPS script. Like CLIPS, Jess uses the Rete algorithm to process rules, a very efficient mechanism for solving the difficult many-to-many matching problem.
NEW AGENTS ON THE NET
Ahoy! is a better homepage finder	Ahoy! is a free World Wide Web service developed at the University of Washington that is designed to help find the home pages of individual people on the Web. It uses Metacrawler to create a large list of candidate web pages and then employs various techniques to weed out the least promising ones, leaving you with a manageable number of choices. The effect of this "information filtering" is that the search can proceed more quickly.
IBM's Webbie is a personal web assistant agent	IBM has released an alpha version (OS/2 and Win95) of the WBI (for "Web Browser Intelligence" aka "Webbie") agent which acts as a WWW proxy between your browser and the rest of the Web. WBI can remember wherever you've been on the web, what you found there, and can help you recall any word on any page that you've visited. It can alert you, before you go to a page, whether the site is not available or the access time will be slow and helps you navigate more productively through the web by learning your preferences and patterns for searching for information. WBI can also alert you if a page you have an interest in has had a content change.
AGENT PROJECTS AND GROUPS
Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam	The DESIRE research at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam focuses on the study of compositional multi-agent systems for complex (and often distributed) tasks and development methods for these systems. Such systems model and support users in coordinating and performing complex cooperative tasks (e.g., design projects, distributed process control). The agent metaphor has been adopted as a point of departure: a complex task can be modeled as a composition of a number of tasks, each of which is performed by one or more agents; these agents can have the form of automated systems or human agents (users). The group has developed an agent modeling framework that addresses three major aspects underlying an agent solving a complex task: the different types of knowledge required, the patterns of reasoning and acting used by the agents, and the interactions between (automated) systems and users.
Web's Magical Music Engine	The Similarities Engine is another web-based music recommending system developed by David Whiteis (WhiteisD@ari.net). Its database has been built up over the past year with input from over 18,000 informants. The Similarities Engine was featured in a recent NYT article The Web's Magical Music Engine (ARTS@LARGE / By Matthew Mirapaul).
AGENT BUSINESS
Yahoo! and Agents Inc. to team for personalized navigation	Yahoo! and Agents Inc. announced a strategic partnership to collaborate to produce a firefly-like service for Web sites. "The degree of information overload on the Web today has no historical precedent," said Nick Grouf, CEO of Agents Inc. "The combination of firefly and Yahoo! will offer Web surfers today and in the future a unique navigational tool to harness the full potential of the Web." ( More info).
WebWhacker off-line browser incorporates "wizards"	Forefront is a Houston company started by AI researcher Dr. G. Anthony Gorry (known for his work applying AI to medical problems) that is marketing several advanced web-based tools. WebWhacker, their latest and most interesting tool, is an "off line" web browser for Windows95 and NT. "By preselecting the Web sites that they want to monitor, users can set a schedule for Web pages, text, graphics and HTML links to be delivered to their desktop computers automatically and unattended. Powerful Wizards walk users through the automation process, requesting that they make only four simple decisions: what Web sites they want monitored, how the selected sites will be categorized, how much of a given site will be retrieved, and how often the content will be updated."
AGENT PAPERS
Intelligent Integration of Information	Kluwer is making the double issue on `Intelligent Integration of Information' of the Journal on Intelligent Information Systems (Vol.6, ns. 2-3) available in book form. See -- Wiederhold, Gio (editor): Intelligent Integration of Information (summary); Kluwer Academic Publishers, Boston MA, July 1996. (Foreword); (Glossary);
On Partially Controlled Multi-Agent Systems	Brafman, R.I. and Tennenholtz, M. (1996), "On Partially Controlled Multi-Agent Systems", JAIR, Volume 4, pages 477-507. Available as brafman96a.ps (356K) or brafman96a.ps.Z (146K). Abstract: Motivated by the control theoretic distinction between controllable and uncontrollable events, we distinguish between two types of agents within a multi-agent system: controllable agents, which are directly controlled by the system's designer, and uncontrollable agents, which are not under the designer's direct control. We refer to such systems as partially controlled multi-agent systems, and we investigate how one might influence the behavior of the uncontrolled agents through appropriate design of the controlled agents. In particular, we wish to understand which problems are naturally described in these terms, what methods can be applied to influence the uncontrollable agents, the effectiveness of such methods, and whether similar methods work across different domains. Using a game-theoretic framework, this paper studies the design of partially controlled multi-agent systems in two contexts: in one context, the uncontrollable agents are expected utility maximizers, while in the other they are reinforcement learners. We suggest different techniques for controlling agents' behavior in each domain, assess their success, and examine their relationship.
Java in MCC's Infosleuth	Nigel Jacobs and Ray Shea, The Role of Java in InfoSleuth: Agent-based Exploitation of Heterogeneous Information Resources, Microeclectronics and Computer Technology Corporation (MCC), Austin, Texas, 1996. Abstract: "...InfoSleuth is a consortial research project at MCC which is developing technologies for addressing these issues. Based on MCC's successful Carnot project, InfoSleuth is developing a network of semi-autonomous software agents which perform semantic data integration and retrieval across a widely distributed network environment. To achieve this, the project employs recent advances in ontology management, data mining, workflow automation, object brokering and language translation. The InfoSleuth architecture consists of agents communicating with each other via the high-level language KQML. Queries are specified in the flexible knowledge representation language KIF, with respect to common ontologies that are managed in knowledge-base management systems such as Ontolingua and CLIPS. The queries are routed by mediation and brokerage agents to specialized agents for data retrieval from distributed resources, and for integration and analysis of results. User interaction with this web of agents is via a personalized intelligent user agent which communicates with the user via Java applets running inside a Java-capable Web browser such as Netscape."
AGENT EVENTS
Intelligence in Services and Networks	IS&N'97, Fourth International Conference on Intelligence in Services and Networks "Technology for Cooperative Competition". Como, Italy May 27-29, 1997. Extended abstracts due 31 Oct. 1996. More information is available.
Conference on Coordination Models and Languages	COORDINATION'97, the Second International Conference on Coordination Models and Languages, will be held in Berlin, Germany on September 1-3, 1997. Papers due January 24, 1997. There will be a co-located industrial case study workshop to present and compare approaches to coordination and software architecture.
Design of intelligent multi-agent systems	The Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam AI group will offer a 5-day postgraduate course on the design of multi-agent systems on October 16-22, 1996. This course, Design of Intelligent Multi-Agent Systems, will use the DESIRE agent modeling framework. Course material and instructions will be in English. The course fee is 1750 ECU and must be received by September 16, 1996.
AGENTNEWS NEWS
Stupid agent tricks	C.J. Cherryh, The KIF Strike Back, Phantasia ltd ed, 1985; DAW Books, 1985; SFBC, 1986. Abstract: "In Compact Space, where some seven species have staked out their often-disputed interstellar frontiers, events move with speed, surprise and a tendency to escalate into shattering violence. Confrontation is routine and treachery, to some, is a way of life. So when the kif seized a hani and a human, the gauntlet was down. Pyanfar Chanur was not one to ignore such a challenge. But what she saw as a simple rescue attempt soon became the deadliest game that even she, controversial captain, no stranger to battle and desperate risk, had ever been engaged in." For related information, see "The History and Development of KIF Writing".