Agent-Mediated Electronic Commerce: An MIT Media Laboratory Perspective

Abstract

Software agents, semi-intelligent autonomous tools, will play an increasing role in electronic commerce applications. This paper gives an overview of the work at MIT’s Media Laboratory on several types of agents for electronic commerce, ranging from consumer-to-consumer “smart” classified-ad systems to merchant agents that provide integrative negotiation capabilities, from agents that facilitate expertise brokering to distributed reputation facilities, and from point-of-sale comparison-shopping agents to mobile shopping systems.