Intelligent Agents – Week Five

Lyrae (Lorraine I.) Perry

University of Phoenix

EBUS 400 – E-Business

Group:

Instructor: Josef Lewis Aguirre

July 24, 2005

Introduction to IA Comparisons

    The three intellingent agents chosen for comparison are:  L.L. Bean, “My Virtual Model”, Thought Treasure and Trademark Tracker. These three intelligent agents (IAs) will be compared in four critical use areas:

1.      User Interface Comparison

2.      IT Infrastructure Required

3.      E-Marketing’s 2 I’s: Individualization & Interactivity

4.      Stickiness

Description of three IA’s

     L.L. Bean, “My Virtual Model” is a fun intelligent agent that is more like a personal shopper. The model is a program that allows for individualization of the model body by filling in the measurements. The user can personalize the virtual model further by adjusting facial features, hairstyle and color as well as skin color and sex. This agent allows the user to ‘try on’ clothing offered for sale on the LL Bean website before buying them. This agent was created to not only help the online purchaser, but also to help reduce the return and exchange of merchandise. Theoretically this is cost effective for the customer and for LL Bean. The information is no doubt proprietary, but it would be interesting to get feedback from LL Bean on the cost and savings or loss this tool provides. Having used the virtual model previously, this author found that the tool was quite effective and accurate.

     ThoughtTreasure’s application areas are 1. software with common sense 2. question answering services 3. information extraction and 4. interactive fiction. It is a highly complex program that accesses a database with lexicon and linguistic and simulation features. ThoughtTreasure began as a research project on Artificial Intelligence (AI) in 1994. “The fundamental problem of artificial intelligence is understanding” (Mueller, 1998). A sentence with clear meaning to a human may not have the same meaning to a computer program. There are many ambiguities in language and many meanings to words and phrases. For example, one sentence may have hundreds or thousands of possible meanings to the computer program trying to decipher the sentence. The objective of creating a program that can understand arbitrary natural language remains unachieved. However, Mueller (1998) believes “… that by adding to ThoughtTreasure’s set of “understanding agents”, it will eventually be able to understand.” The program can be downloaded to a PC or a Mac for operation by a user.

     Trademark Tracker is a no-nonsense program for use by those who have suspicions or direct knowledge of trademark or copyright infringement of their product or service. The program is a sophisticated monitoring agent that gathers information about possible trademark violations from databases and websites. The purpose is to identify the cyber pirates who exploit others for financial gain. The program offers protection for created works and services, and for what rightfully belongs to companies and individuals. With the growth of the internet, the task of searching without an intelligent agent such as Trademark Tracker would be next to impossible.

User Interface Comparison

1. L.L. Bean, “My Virtual Model” - is a program that operates on the LL Bean website only, and the customer need not download anything. The website does save the information in “my account” for future use by the customer (LL Bean.com, 2005).
2. Thought Treasure - offers a download from the internet, so that users can operate the program from their own computer (Mueller, 1998).
3. Trademark Tracker - Trademark Tracker is a program that is offered for sale in addition to the personal, professional services offered by the owners of the website (Trademark Tracker.com, 2002).

IT Infrastructure Required

     LL Bean’s “My Virtual Model” requires a lot of IT infrastructure in order to operate and maintain the program. A good deal of memory, both RAM and ROM would be required for the servers to operate properly and ‘remember’ each customer’s measurements, preferences and wardrobe choices.

     ThoughtTreasure spells out the IT infrastructure needed to operate the program and access the various databases on its website. ThoughtTreasure is a collection of programs needing constant maintenance and attention. The infrastructure is evolving constantly with the improvement in technology and programming.

Individualization and Interactivity

     LL Bean’s “My Virtual Model” has a high degree of individualization as each person can input personal features, coloring, hair style, sex, and body measurements into the program. The program then gives the user a rotating 3-D view of their likeness with the added benefit of being able to try on all the clothes offered on the website and have a look at what the user may look like in the outfits. It is surprisingly accurate and fun! Interactivity is limited to trying on different clothing items and rotating the model image.

     ThoughtTreasure is both individual and interactive on the level of communication. It has its limitations due to the problems of understanding conversation. This limitation is discussed and analyzed thoroughly on the website.

     Trademark Tracker offers individualization in terms of search parameters for websites, and it produces results based on those requirements. It accesses and uses many search engines to track down specific requests for information on websites. For example, if a company was looking to find a trademark infringement on a product, the tracker program can be configured to look for a relevant word, phrase or information bit that may reside on websites across the web. The program would then yield the precise location and identify the person(s).

Stickiness

     Each of the three websites is quite different in terms of stickiness. The three intelligent agents chosen for this paper are targeting different audiences, and are therefore limited in appeal. The target audience for each of these agents would certainly be inclined to stick on the website or stick to using the program. Even if the general appeal is limited, the intelligent agents are still interesting.

     LL Bean’s site offers a shopper the most variety and ease of use. This site is a clear winner in terms of stickiness. Shoppers not only get to look for goodies, sales and necessary clothing, but they get to have fun in the process by working with the intelligent agent “My Virtual Model”.

     Trademark Tracker heads the list in minimal stickiness. It is all about business with regard to tracking down cyber crime on the internet. The users who would want this service are probably not looking for anything but quick information and results. Users would not want to be bogged down on the site looking for tools and trying to figure out how to use the site to search for copyright and trademark infringement. They either need the service or not. The company is building its reputation on immediate service and results, not on keeping customers on the website.

     ThoughtTreasure is a very large website with a lot of research information. It has stickiness insofar as the user would want to know how the site originated and how it is evolving. This is a site dedicated to those who are interested in artificial intelligence (AI) with programming information on expanding and evolving the processes. The website offers little to the casual user, but the program itself would be fun to use, and would have some stickiness for children and programmers.

Conclusion

     All three of these intelligent agents are interesting in their own way. They are useful in each case for the targeted audience, but are limited in broad appeal. The virtual model on the LL Bean website is the more appealing of all intelligent agents in this review. ThoughtTreasure will have to evolve to interest the masses. We are not yet at the point where AI is fit for a comparison to “I Robot”. The Trademark Tracker intelligent agent is one that has appeal to inventors, artists and businesses who are looking to protect their exclusive work from cyber piracy. The need is certainly there and this company fills the bill nicely.

 References

Anonymous (2002). Services: Trademark Tracker. AllResearch Incorporated. Retrieved from the World Wide Web on July 24, 2005 at: http://www.trademarktracker.com/pages/home.html

L.L. Bean.com (2005). My Virtual Model. Retrieved from the World Wide Web on July 24, 2005 at: http://www.llbean.com/myVirtualModel/index.html

Mueller, E.T. (1998). Natural Language Processing with ThoughtTreasure. New York: Signiform. Retrieved from the World Wide Web on July 24, 2005 at: http://www.signiform.com/tt/book/Preface.html

Intelligent Agents WK5

Adan Raya

EBUS/400

E-BUSINESS

Joseph Lewis Aguirre

7/23/05 

Intelligent Agents WK5

Intelligent agents, our drive to maximize our day-to-day evens have driven us to created artificial helper. This artificial aids range from entertainment to business, from personal use to professional use, but are we utilizing them as aids or are we relying on them to do our jobs. Companies are begging to top the potential of intelligent agents. A good example of this is SmartBot Suite this intelligent agent was created to serve business. An example of an intelligent agent designed for the masses is 20Q (twenty questions) this is an entertainment intelligent agent. A second example of an intelligent agent created for the masses is Perfect Keylogger this intelligent agent was created to memorize and log all activity on computers.

SmartBot Suite is an intelligent agent created by Artificial life, Inc. SmartBot Suite is utilize in a companies communication system. it primarily is use in web base system with a call center. SmartBot can identify and reply to various e-mails. For example, it can be program to identify general e-mails to the company and not to a specific individual with in the company and be able to reply to the general question(s) with in the e-mail. This translates into revenue for a company. How so? Well. This would be e-mails that an individual within the company would have replayed to otherwise. With SmartBot this individual could be utilize somewhere else with in the company or the job position could be face out. This is just an example of this type of intelligent agents. Today you can find the same type of agent that can be used by public.

 20Q is one more intelligent agent that is used by the masses. This agent is an entertainment agent. The functionality of this agent is to guess the thing that you are thinking of under 20 questions. If it fails 20Q is designed to learn the correct answer base on the question ask. This Intelligent agent has no other functionality than to provide the end user with a good time. Again the more it is use the harder it is to defeat the system.

Intelligent target to the public are not all about fun. There are some very define intelligent agents. An example is Perfect Keylogger. Keylogger is design to “SPY”. Yes this intelligent agent once install can keep track of every key stroke in the host computer. It can also create screen prints; keep a log of all web URLS visited. This is a great way to track your kids’ activities online. Of course, you can see the potential this intelligent agent has to maintain a internet-safe home environment. This product can also be used at the work place. Target corporation employees with e-mail and internet access have to sign a declaimer acknowledging that all the activity that goes on with their login could be potentially recorded if Target Corp. feel the need to so. Although Target does not use Perfect Keylogger, it does use a program similar to it.

Are we taking advantage of these intelligent agents or are we utilizing them as intended, as helpers. in today world market companies and individuals have to implement every single resource they posses to gain that leading edge to place them above their competitors.

Reference

20Q.net (2004) Twenty Questions– the neural-net on the Internet

Retrieved on July 22, 2005 from the World Wide Web: http://www.20q.net/index.html

Artificial Life, Inc. (2004) Intelligent Agents and mobile solution– SmartBot Suite

Retrieved on July 22, 2005 from the World Wide Web: http://www.artificial-life.com/

Blazing Tools Software (2004) Perfect Keylogger - easy to use solution for PC and

Internet surveillance Retrieved on July 22, 2005 from the World Wide Web: http://www.blazingtools.com/bpk.html