Electric Elves: Agent Technology for Supporting Human Organizations
Hans Chalupsky, Yolanda Gil, Craig A. Knoblock, Kristina Lerman, Jean Oh,
David V. Pynadath, Thomas A. Russ and Milind Tambe.
USC / Information Sciences Institute
4676 Admiralty Way
Marina del Rey, CA 90292
USA
Abstract
The operation of a human organization requires dozens of everyday tasks
to ensure coherence in organizational activities, to monitor the status
of such activities, to gather information relevant to the organization,
to keep everyone in the organization informed, etc. Teams of software
agents can aid humans in accomplishing these tasks, facilitating the
organization's coherent functioning and rapid response to crises, while
reducing the burden on humans. Based on this vision, this paper reports
on Electric Elves, a system that has been operational, 24/7, at
our research institute since June 1, 2000.
Tied to individual user workstations, fax machines, voice, mobile
devices such as cell phones and palm pilots, Electric Elves has assisted
us in routine tasks, such as rescheduling meetings, selecting presenters
for research meetings, tracking people's locations, organizing lunch
meetings, etc. We discuss the underlying AI technologies that led to the
success of Electric Elves, including technologies devoted to agent-human
interactions, agent coordination, accessing multiple heterogeneous
information sources, dynamic assignment of organizational tasks, and
deriving information about organization members. We also report the
results of deploying Electric Elves in our own research organization.
In AI Magazine 23:2, pp. 11-24, Summer 2002.
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