Intelligent Agents in a Trust Environment

Abstract

Intelligent agents and multi-agent technologies are an emerging technology in computing and communications that hold much promise for a wide variety of applications in Information Technology. Agent-based systems range from the simple, single agent system performing tasks such as email filtering, to a very complex, distributed system of multiple agents each involved in individual and system wide goal-oriented activity. With the tremendous growth in the Internet and Internet-based computing and the explosion of commercial activity on the Internet in recent years, intelligent agent-based systems are being applied in a wide variety of electronic commerce applications. In order to be able to act autonomously in a market environment, agents must be able to establish and maintain trust relationships. Without trust, commerce will not take place. This research extends previous work in intelligent agents to include a mechanism for handling the trust relationship and shows how agents can be fully used as intermediaries in commerce.