TrIAs: Trainable Information Assistants for Cooperative Problem Solving
Mathias Bauer, Dietmar Dengler, Markus Meier, Gaby Paul · 1999
Software agents are intended to perform certain tasks on behalf of their users. In many cases, however, the agent's competence is not sufficient to produce the desired outcome. This paper presents an approach to cooperative problem solving in which an information agent and its user try to support each other in the achievement of a particular goal. As a side effect the user can extend the agent's capabilities in a programming-by-demonstration dialog, thus enabling it to autonomously perform similar tasks in the future. 1 Introduction Software agents are intended to autonomously perform certain tasks on behalf of their users. In many cases, however, the agent's competence might not be sufficient to produce the desired outcome. Instead of simply giving up and leaving the whole task to the user, a much better alternative would be to precisely identify what the cause of the current problem is, communicate it to another agent who can be expected to be able (and willing) to help, and use th...