Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Intelligent Agents
In the context of this topic, an
intelligent agent
is a software tool that scans the
web for specific topics and citations. However, it would not just return web links
and web pages. Instead, the intelligent agent would use artificial intelligence and
neural networks to analyze and condense some of the information and return actu-
al summary information.
To a certain degree, the new Wolfram Alpha search tool acts as an intelligent
agent in exactly this fashion. The author found on the web an interesting example
of a search using this tool. The question was, “What are the ingredients in McDon-
ald's hamburgers?” Instead of just providing links to websites and relevant art-
icles, the tool returned an actual list of ingredients, including meat products, salt,
sugar, and oils together with information on calories, fat content, cholesterol, and
other relevant topics.
It is hard to imagine a single intelligent agent being competent in all disciplines.
What will probably occur between now and the end of the decade might be a series
of individual intelligent agents that are highly optimized to seek out and report on
specific topics.
Some of the kinds of topics where intelligent agents would be useful might be
in experimental therapies for immune disorders, the comparative costs and rev-
enue streams for open-source companies and products, the comparative strengths
and weakness of health insurance programs in all countries, the relative learning
curves and defect densities of common programming languages, and the effective-
ness of air-traffic control systems in every country.
Given the huge and growing mass of data now available on the web, no single
person can possibly stay current even in his or her own discipline. A good set
of intelligent agents that constantly scans and summarizes important information
would be a boon for scientists, college students, business and technical workers,
civilian government personnel, and military planners.
Medical Devices
The impact of computers and software on medical practice has been profound.
This is especially true for the many new kinds of small medical devices that can
be surgically implanted, such as cochlear implants, which have restored hearing to
thousands of profoundly deaf patients.
Search WWH ::
Custom Search