Why were PASHAs born, and what they are

The use of intelligent agents has been increasing in the last two years, particularly in constructing improved search engines for the internet. Today, some modern search engines are capable of analyzing the text of search results obtained by keyword search in order to ensure relevance to the needs of the user. They do this by utilizing various degrees of natural language processing to ensure contextual relevance. Another technique contributing to relevance is the "profiling" of users, consisting of contextual delimiters supplied by the user.

While the use of such agents has made substantial inroads toward improving internet searches, it is fair to say that the agents used thus far are relatively limited in scope and capability. For one thing, the early agents have addressed largely only one application, the linguistic processing of text. There is a lot more that agents can do toward improving the quality of life by assisting humans in carrying out a variety of applications. This is the aim addressed by the development of PASHAs, Personal Application-Specific Hyper-intelligent Agents.

The PASHA acronym delineates some essential differences from early intelligent agents. A PASHA is:

Personal: It is designed to accept personal wishes of a specific user, and act according to these wishes. This will include the capability not only to engage in a search for useful information according to the user’s wishes, but also the ability to take action pre-authorized by the user. The personalization of a PASHA subsumes the profiling of a user, although it is best limited to a specific application.

Application Specific: It is foolhardy, and virtually impossible, to design an IA which will do everything for everybody. Fortunately, it is also unnecessary. It is sufficient to design a PASHA which can carry out a specific task well, and perhaps solicit the help of another PASHA specialized in another area.

Hyper-intelligent: This term was chosen of course in order to properly complete the acronym, but it also conveys a special message. The PASHA will not be limited to the kind of intelligence currently possessed by its early progenitors. It will be endowed with advanced capability of Natural Language Processing, and with speech recognition capability where needed. The idea is to produce something that communicates with humans the way they prefer to communicate and not the way an ordinary "user friendly" system communicates today.

It may be pointed out that the information processed by a PASHA need not be confined to that obtained over the internet. PASHAs can be used as intelligent assistants in carrying out everyday tasks around the home or the office, based on information available on site. But it is in improving the use of the internet that PASHAs can have the greatest impact, by relieving humans from the inordinately high loads of processing internet information, doing their job around the clock, and delivering their service exactly when it is needed.

Key advances incorporated in PASHAs

A PASHA will have a natural language processing capability, and user interfaces, substantially superior to any agents developed to date. First of all, by limiting the use of a PASHA to a narrow domain of a specific application, we can achieve an improved efficiency of linguistic processing, which is inversely proportional to the breadth of context. Combining less-than-perfect recognition of speech transmitted over noisy channels (e.g. telephone lines) with natural language processing, we will enable users to communicate with PASHAs by voice, in ordinary English, albeit over the limited context of a specific application. A PASHA will also generate relevant text, following the completion of a search and other necessary tasks, in order to inform its master and/or carry out transactions within a range pre-authorized by the user.

One of the key advances incorporated in a PASHA will be the ability to go beyond information retrieval, to a "computational enhancement" of information leading to a recommendation and/or action. This enhancement will involve processing of information obtained in any way, including the internet, in order to extract information to be used by algorithms specific to an application, leading to a decision. For example, a PASHA assisting the management of a portfolio may obtain information concerning stock market activities as well as news concerning specific companies, then derive inputs necessary for the use of portfolio management algorithms appropriate for the needs of its master.

Thus, the computational enhancement of information will generally involve three steps:

a) Input Preparation: The raw information will be processed in order to obtain the necessary input parameters in the form required by the available computational algorithms. This step may require, for example, linguistic processing in order to extract from a text some appropriate data and then convert the data in the required input format. In other cases, the information may be obtained in some numerical form, but may need to be converted into a different input format. Evevtually, the PASHA will also be able to extract information from images, e.g. from a color-coded diagram.

b) Computational Enhancement of Information: On the basis of inputs obtained as indicated above, the agent will carry out computations based on algorithms appropriate to the specific application in order to obtain an improved characterization of a system in terms of appropriate state variables. At this stage the agent may evaluate the outcome of "what if" type questions and compile results which may be used for decision making.

c) Decision Making: At the discretion of the user, the agent may be allowed to make a decision based on the preceding computational results, and initiate appropriate action through interaction with other agents, or by entering an order for a transaction.

The use of a PASHA, or any other comparable aids in the use of internet for e-commerce, will change dramatically both the nature of the process and the degree of participation. This is certainly true for consumers, but even more so for businesses which are likely to derive the earliest and biggest benefits from the use of PASHAs providing personalized service to customers ranging from operating units to individual employees.

Among the problems we have addressed so far are the following:

• Management of credit cards and other financial transactions