AN INTELLIGENT AGENTis a software entity that senses its environment and

then carries out some operations on behalf of a user, with a certain degree of autonomy, and in doing so, employs knowledge or representation of the user’s

goals or desires.

The Agent will take your profile and preferences and then go out and work on your behalf.

Characteristics of an intelligent agentAutonomy: can act without you telling them what to doAdaptivity: can change itself and what it does based upon your changing characteristics.Sociability: can communicate and interact with other agents that it encounters.

Types of Intelligent Agents• Information Agents: search for information and bring it back to you (from the

Internet or a database)– Buyer agents, shopping bots, search and filtering agents, Googlebots that scour the

Internet locating and indexing sites that ultimately appear in search results when you do a Google search.

– The SuperFetch feature (search feature) found in Vista

• Monitoring and Surveillance Agents: constantly observe and report back on what they see.– Applications software agents monitor the activities of software users and offer

suggestions for improvement.– Wizards and the Microsoft Office Assistant (Clip It)

• User Agents: act as a personal assistant by taking action on your behalf. Examples include sorting and prioritizing email, filling out forms on the Web automatically for you, and automatically storing your information.

• Data Mining agents operate in a data warehouse by sifting through the data, trying to discover trends, relationships and patterns through the use of multidimensional statistical analysis.

• A relational database stores information in a series of two dimensional tables.

• Data warehouses are multidimensional, containing layers of rows and columns. Each dimension is an attribute of information.

Data-mining agents perform multidimensional analysis in data

warehouses • Cube – common term for the representation of multi-

dimensional information (layers, rows, columns)

• Info in an Excel spreadsheet and a relational database (Access) appears in the form of a two dimensional table of rows and columns.

• By adding a Page Field to a Pivot Table, you can add another dimension of information: 3-D (rows and columns and layers).– Creating a 3-dimensional Pivot Table in Excel is a

means of conceptually building a data warehouse. Page fields represent the depth layer

• Pivot Tables can help you see relationships in the data

Data-mining agents perform multidimensional analysis in data

warehouses • Cube – common term for the representation of multi-

dimensional information (layers, rows, columns)

AI System

Expert Systems

Neural Networks

Genetic Algorithms

Intelligent Agents

Problem Type

Diagnostic or prescriptive

Identification, classification, prediction

Optimal solution

Specific and repetitive tasks

Based On

Strategies of experts

The human brain

Biological evolution

One or more AI techniques

Starting Information

Expert’s know-how

Acceptable patterns

Set of possible solutions

Your preferences

• This type of system is used to find the very best, or optimal answer? It is based on evolutionary concepts– The Genetic Algorithm

• What type of system is based on pattern recognition? Due to its pattern recognition abilities, it is capable of learning. It can detect forgeries and new viruses it has never seen.– The Neural Network

• This type of system can reason through a process. It is used for diagnostic and prescriptive types of tasks.– The Expert System

• This is a highly interactive system where you have to know what you are doing to effectively use it. It is used to solve non-programmed decisions (unstructured problems) where there are several possible correct answers. Spreadsheet what-if analysis is an example of what this system can do.– Decision Support System

• Data mining agents conduct multi-dimensional analysis of the data found in a ______________.– Data warehouse

• Buyer agents, shop bots and googlebots are examples of what type of agent?– Information agents

• The Microsoft Office Assistant wizard (Clip It) is an example of what type of agent?– Monitoring and surveillance agent