Way back when I was a Bull-ant we had a lunchtime lecture from one of my old professors … John Debenham. He spoke at length about multi-agent systems. They are the bomb – if you’re at all interested in future complex programming developments then you have to do some reading 🙂
Anyway, on to my point (aside from discovering that Bullant is back up and running…) – agents are taking off in Copenhagen. Check this out at slashdot :
Digital ‘Ghosts’ To Guide Students On Campus
Hambone.dk writes “The students at Copenhagen’s new IT University will soon be guided by invisible, but talkative digital agents, known as ghosts or Disembodied Location-specific Conversational Agents. The ghosts are to compete amongst themselves for privileges such as better vocabulary or the ability to clone themselves. Ignored ghosts can die out completely. This project is a lot more serious than it sounds at face value – several papers have been published already.”
Wow. It is great to see agents being used in a real environment. Wouldn’t you just love to go to University there right now?
[Update 2007 :Â Prof. Debenham has co-founded the eMarkets Group that looks like it is furthering this research.]
Posted by Matthew 
A Dog's Breakfast, part II 