How Might People Interact with Agents

By: Aryan RathoreHead Of Aryan Dell Corporation Jaipur

Aryan Computer Organization JaipurMob:- 8560089002

• Probably all the major software manufacturers are exploring the use of intelligent agents. Myths, promises, and reality are all colliding. But the main difficulties I foresee are social, not technical: How will intelligent agents interact with people and perhaps more important, how might people think about agents?

• The new crop of "intelligent agents" are different from the automated devices of earlier eras because of their computational power:

• They take over human tasks, and they interact with people in human-like ways, perhaps with a form of natural language

Thus, agents might set up schedules, reserve hotel and meeting rooms, arrange transportation, and even outline meeting topics, all without human intervention. Other, more complex interventions in human activities are contemplated. These human-like activities and characteristics are what lead to the special concern over today's agents. Moreover, today's agents are simple in comparison to those that are being planned.

• To ensure a smooth introduction of this technology, two major themes are relevant. One theme deals with the way people feel about agents, the other with comfort and acceptance of their automatic, autonomous actions.

Ensuring that people feel in control of their computational systems; The nature of the human-agent interaction; Built-in safeguards to prevent runaway computation; Providing accurate expectations (and minimizing false hopes); Privacy concerns (a subset of the feeling of control problem); Hiding complexity while simultaneously revealing the underlying operations.

The Feeling of Control

• An important psychological aspect of people's comfort with their activities -- all of their activities, from social relations, to jobs, to their interaction with technology -- is the feeling of control they have over these activities and their personal lives

It's bad enough when people are intimidated by their home appliances: what will happen when automatic systems select the articles they should read, determine the importance and priority of their daily mail, and automatically answer mail, send messages, and schedule appointments?

It is essential that people feel in control of their lives and surroundings, and that when automata do tasks for them, that they are comfortable with the actions, in part through a feeling of understanding, in part through confidence in the systems.

• The lack of confidence in automation is justified. We have a poor track record in developing large scale, com

• Agents pose especially complex technical questions because they are intended to be autonomous processes, sometimes capable of migrating across networks and processors plex systems.

• Moreover, each agent is apt to be created independently of the others, often in ignorance of the existence of others, so conflicts, contradictory actions, and synchronizing problems are bound to occur.

• Two things are necessary to make all this technology acceptable: one is technical, the other social. The technical aspect is to devise a computational structure that guarantees that from the technical standpoint, all is under control. This is not an easy task.

The social part of acceptability is to provide reassurance to the user that all is working according to plan. The best way to do this is through developing an appropriate conceptual model of the actions, one in which the actions of agents are understood in context so users feel comfortable in their ability to find out what actions have been taken in their behalf, that private matters remain private, that expensive or unwanted actions will not be taken without explicit permission, and that it is always possible to trace back the actual sequence of acts and undo any that are seen as unwarranted.

• This is a non-trivial task. We don't yet know how to do this, and to a large extent, the amount of information and explicit control that has to be provided is a function of the state of the individual's own comfort level: this will change over time, both for individuals and for society.

• Probably, in the early days, agents will have to make their presence and actions known through a conceptual model of the underlying operations and then, through graphics, sound, and appropriately chosen verbal messages, provide a continual updating of the conceptual state. • As reliability increases, so too will

people's comfort and acceptance.

Overblown Expectations

• If the one aspect of people's attitudes about agents is fear over their capabilities and actions, the other is over-exaggerated expectations, triggered to a large extent because much more has promised than can be delivered. • Part of this is the natural enthusiasm of the

researcher who sees far into the future and imagines a world of perfect and complete actions. Part of this is in the nature of people's tendency to false expectations.

Safety

• Safety plays a part in the feeling of control: making sure that the agent does not do things that would jeopardize the physical, mental, or monetary well-being of the owner. • But how can this be guaranteed when

intelligent agents might enter one's system from outside? Sometimes one won't even know, as when they arrive in the mail, or are parts of some new set of capabilities being added to the computational system.

• How does one guard against error, maliciousness (as in the spread of computer viruses), and deliberate intent to pry and probe within one's personal records?

Privacy

Privacy is a complex topic, one deeply rooted in human cultural and legal systems. The concerns for privacy within the United States are not necessarily mirrored in the rest of the world, nor for that matter, even in the prior history of the United States.

Privacy often pits the interests of one group against another: the right of citizens to know what their government is doing; the right of one family to know what its neighbors are doing; the right or necessity of a government or person to keep its activities private and confidential.

Not all the need for privacy is to avoid the detection of wrong-doing. White lies and other deceptions are an essential, positive aspect of social interaction, allowing for smoother, friendlier social discourse.The idea that autonomous, intelligent agents could have access to personal records, correspondence, and financial activities is disturbing to many individuals, no matter how helpful the agents might be. Moreover, as the ability to imbed agents within electronic mail messages becomes more prevalent, who will be comfortable with the mail systems?

• Privacy and confidentiality of actions will be among the major issues confronting the use of intelligent agents in our future of a fully interconnected, fully communicating society. We must address those issues now, not just in the technical sense, but in the local, national, and global legal systems.

Human-Agent Interaction

• What is the appropriate form of interaction between agent and person? • The question has many different

components, including how the person shall instruct and control the agent, the nature of the feedback from agent to person, the manner by which the person's conceptual model of the agent's method of operation and activities is presented, and the manner by which the agent offers advice and information to the person.

• Take the problem of instruction: programming the agent. This is a complex issue. Various suggestions exist, from having the agent instruct itself by watching over people's activities and deciding how it can offer help, to instruction "by doing": "watch what I do," says the person," "and then do it for me."

Agents are here to stay: once unleashed, technologies do not disappear.

Agents may well have numerous positive contributions to our lives. They can simplify our use of computers, allowing us to move away from the complexity of command languages or the tedium of direct manipulation toward intelligent, agent-guided interaction.

Agents offer the possibility of providing friendly assistance, so smoothly done that users need not even be aware

• But along with the promise comes potential danger. Agents are unlike other artifacts of society in that they have some level of intelligence, some form of self-initiated, self-determined goals. • Along with their benefits and capabilities

come the potential for social mischief, for systems that run amok, for a loss of privacy, and for further alienation of society form technology through increasing loss of the sense of control.

• None of these negative aspects of agents are inevitable. All can be eliminated or minimized, but only if we consider these aspects in the design of our intelligent systems.