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The most noble and profitable invention of all other was that of speech, consisting of names or appellations, and their connexion; whereby men register their thoughts, recall them when they are past, and also declare them one to another for mutual utility and conversation; without which there had been amongst men neither Commonwealth, nor society, nor contract, nor peace, no more than amongst lions, bears and wolves.
-- Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, I, 4
THIS ISSUE

Volume 3 ,Number 2
May 27, 1998
Baltimore, MD

 http://www.cs.umbc.edu/agents/agentnews/1998/02/
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Modified Wednesday, 27-May-1998 21:23:09 EDT
AGENT NEWS

Positions available

 A post doc position is available at the Istituto Dalle Molle di Studi sull'Intelligenza Artificiale, Lugano, Switzerland in Collective/Cooperative Autonomous Robotics. For a period of 1 year, starting summer 1998, with possible extensions.

The Intelligent Business Systems Research group at BT Research Laboratories is conducting advanced research and development into intelligent software agent systems. Submit CV and covering letter to: Paul O'Brien, obrienpd@info.bt.co.uk, pp:MLB/1/12 BT Laboratories Martlesham Heath, Ipswich IP5 3RE U.K.

Post-Doctoral and programming positions are available in the D'Agents (Agent Tcl) research group at Dartmouth College.

AGENT PROJECTS

Norns go to war


Agents from Albia , is an article by Clive Davidson in the May 9 issue of New Scientist which describes how Cyberlife, the company which created the popular creatures alife product, is working with the British government's Defense Evaluation and Research Agency (DERA) to create agents to act as adversaries for pilots flying missions in flight simulators.
    "In their virtual world, norns live as cute, clever pets that reason and learn. In the real world, the military has enlisted the technology behind norns to create top fighter pilots. ... After running populations of 40 pilots through up to 400 generations of evolution, CyberLife has software agents that don't crash their planes and can keep targets in their sights for a long time. On paper, these synthetic pilots look as good as human aces, but DERA has not yet put humans through exactly the same test on a simulator. That would be one of the next steps for DERA and CyberLife to take."
In March CyberLife Technology signed an agreement with the UK's Ministry of Defense research organization to build a simulated military aircraft controlled by a software agent. CyberLife will be using real flight model data from the MOD to simulate an aircraft akin to the Eurofighter. "This intelligent plane, however, requires no human intervention and will be capable of sustaining flight, pursuing enemy vehicles, evading attack and making reasoned decisions in order to complete its mission requirements."

Do-I-Care Agent?

 The Do-I-Care Agent (DICA) developed at UC Irvine addresses the resource re-discovery problem on the Web. Once you've found an interesting site, how do you know when new and interesting material has been added? For example, you may want to know about a new and interesting paper by a colleague. Or you may want to know about any airplane ticket sales to Australia. You don't want to know about minor changes - you want to know when cheap fares to Australia are available. DICA solves this problem by periodically visiting the site and only informing you when something interesting has occurred. You provide DICA with feedback on its interestingness judgments and thus train it to recognize the changes of interest to you. Two papers are:

ReferralWeb

ReferralWeb automatically creates social networks representing relationships between friends, colleagues, and co-workers from public information available on the Web. Two people are linked if the system has gathered evidence that the two people are somehow related. The network can then be used to guide search for information, experts, and introductions. For example, you might use the system to find experts on cryptography who are within 3 steps of yourself. The system will both find the experts and show how you are related, allowing you find trusted information from trusted experts, who are likely to help because they are friends of your friends. You can try a Java demo of ReferralWeb which includes information on about 10K computer scientists working in AI, NLP, ML and theory and read about it in The Hidden Web, by Henry Kautz, Bart Selman, and Mehul Shah. The AI Magazine, vol. 18, no. 2, Summer 1997, pages 27 - 36.
AGENT TECHNOLOGY

COBALT=KQML+CORBA

COBALT is an agent communication toolkit based on KQML and CORBA. which is coded in both Java (using JavaBeans) and C++ and uses HP ORBPlus/JORBPlus ORBs. COBALT is described in several papers: and there is a mailing list for users.

JAM!

 Intelligent Reasoning Systems (IRS) is a small R&D and consulting company based in southern California which specializes in Intelligent Software Agents and Distributed Artificial Intelligence. IRS offers two systems for downloading -- Jam! and UMPRS. Jam! is a Java-based intelligent agent architecture that grew out of academic research and extended during the last five years of use,development, and application. Jam combines the best aspects of several leading-edge intelligent agent frameworks, including the Procedural Reasoning System (PRS) and SRI's ACT plan interlingua. UMPRS is a C++ implementation of a PRS-like planning engine developed at the University of Michigan.

D'Agents

 The Dartmouth D'Agents Research Group has released version 2.0 of D'Agents, formerly known as Agent Tcl. The new system will support languages in addition to Tcl, including Java, Scheme, and Python.
AGENT EVENTS

Agents & Ethics

 FIPA is sponsoring a workshop on The Impact of Agents on Communications and Ethics: What do and don't we know? in Dublin on July 15 1998. Speakers will include Tom Cooper, Kaarle Nordenstreng, John Pavlic, Adam Clayton Powell, III, Hing Ai Yun. Attendance to the workshop will be free and open to the public.

Conferences and Workshops

The European Workshop on Learning Robots 1998 (EWLR-7) 1998. will take place at the Department of Artificial Intelligence at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, on the 20th of July 1998, immediately before the International Symposium on Intelligent Robotic Systems (SIRS-98).

SAB'98 Workshop On Grounding Emotions In Adaptive Systems to be held during the 5th International Conference of the Society for Adaptive Behavior (SAB'98), University of Zurich, Switzerland, August 21, 1998

Socially Situated Intelligence, a workshop at SAB'98: the Fifth International Conference of the Society for Adaptive Behavior University of Zurich, 17 - 21 August 1998, Switzerland. Submissions by 14th June 1998.

The First Workshop on Embodied Conversational Characters, Granlibakken Resort & Conference Center at Lake Tahoe, California, USA, October 12-15, 1998.

IATA'98 at the Agents' World Event, 4 - 7 July 1998, Cite de Sciences - La Vilette, Paris (France)

I'MEDIAT'98, First International Workshop on Practical Information Mediation and Brokering, and the Commerce of Information on the Internet. Tokyo, Japan, September 14 1998. In Conjunction with The Eleventh International Conference on Applications of Prolog (INAP'98)

Second Iberoamerican Workshop On Distributed Artificial Intelligence And Multiagent Systems, Toledo, Spain October 1-2, 1998.

International Workshop on Intelligent Agents in Information and Process Management, KI-98, Bremen, Germany, September 15-17, 1998.

AGENTS' WORLD, 3 July (Fri) - 7 July (Tue), 1998 , Cite des Sciences, La Villette, Paris, France.

5/27/98

AGENTS IN PRINT

The Reality Club

Edge is a web site run by the Edge Foundation, a private, non-profit organization whose mission is "to promote inquiry into and discussion of intellectual, philosophical, artistic, and literary issues, as well as to work for the intellectual and social achievement of society." It is an outgrowth of The Reality Club, an informal group founded by John Brockman, that is "committed to creating and maintaining a forum that offers an intelligent, thoughtful and engaging exchange of ideas." Recent Edge features include interviews with Pattie Maes (Intelligence Augmentation), Marvin Minsky (Consciousness is a Big Suitcase), Rod Brooks (The Deep Question), and a debate between Steve Pinker and Steve Rose (The Two Steves)
AGENT PRODUCTS

AgentSoft Demos

 AgentSoft has demos of its LiveAgent Pro agent building technology. The include
  • A book shopping agent that shops for you at 3 on-line stores
  • A business trip information agent that integrates valuable information for business travelers from several different Web sites
  • A news agent that searches for news from several sources
  • An investment agent that gets information for a given stock symbol
The Java-based agents integrate information from a variety of sources and present the user with a report. Some of the agents run as applets, and some run on an agent server.

Organik

Orbital Technologies is a privately held company founded in 1995 and headquartered in Edinburgh which has developed a product called Organik that "addresses the people-related issues associated with locating, collecting and managing corporate knowledge." Using Organik, a user can ask a question and receive a set of answers consistent with their defined interest profile, refine their request using relevance feedback and, if necessary, ask Organik to recommend a contact person who could supply additional information. Orbital's Java-based Organik server application is configured to:
  • Link knowledge seekers with knowledge holders
  • Develop a comprehensive and dynamic record of users' competencies
  • Support the process of knowledge discovery over an extended period
  • Integrate information from disparate sources such as corporate intranet sites, GroupWare applications, newsgroups and relational databases
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