September 2, 1996
Secret Agent Man
By Bob O'Donnell
While I wouldn't consider myself a science fiction fanatic, I have a healthy interest
in intriguing ideas about the future and what it will be like. And as a technologist and
Web devotee, one of the most compelling science fiction-like ideas I've heard about it is
intelligent agents: little software applications that are supposed to do certain tasks
automatically for you, such as search the Web and bring back the information in which
you're most interested.
Numerous companies have touted intelligent agent-like capabilities over the years --
one of the most infamous being Apple's Knowledge Navigator video -- but it's largely
remained within the realm of fiction. With the Web continuing to grow at such an
exponential rate, though, the need for making this kind of capability a reality is growing
ever stronger.
Enter AutoNomy, a new Web-based intelligent
agent package from a small British firm of the same name. Working in conjunction with
artificial intelligence researchers from Cambridge
Neurodynamics, the company has produced a stand-alone Windows 3.1 application (which
also works under Win95) that lets you train intelligent agents that then go out and search
the web. (A 30-day trial beta version is now available for downloading at their site.)
The way the product works is that you select an agent, type in a full sentence, in
English, describing the subject you're interested in, and then send it off to find what
you want. The artificial intelligence capabilities are supposed to figure out what you
want, search the Web for pages that match, and then deliver back links (or entire pages if
you choose) to relevant material.
In my very limited experience with the beta, AutoNomy found some relevant information,
albeit very slowly, but I didn't see anything that I wouldn't have found with a search
engine. Plus it found related items that didn't exactly match my needs -- and given how
much information is available on the Web, I need something that's even more precise than
search engines, not less.
But despite these obvious limitations, I'm intrigued by the technology and curious to
see where it can take me. This is particularly true because what I consider the most
appealing part of the concept -- the ability to send an agent (which takes the graphical
form of a dog) off to a "kennel" that sits on a Web server, then log off and
have the agent keep working for you -- was not yet available for testing. Depending on how
accurately and completely the agent searches work, this could be the first legitimate
competition for search engines. The notion of controlling and updating previous searches
from your desktop, instead of having to go out to a Web-based search engine and start each
process anew, is appealing.
New methods for tapping into the overwhelming wealth of information available on the
Web will undoubtedly develop quickly. In the meantime, I'm anxious to put an agent to
work.
©
Copyright 1996, by InfoWorld Publishing Corp., a
subsidiary of IDG Communications, Inc. Reprinted from InfoWorld,
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