Les agents intelligents : une question de recherche

In front of the complexity of the Internet, intelligent agents appear like a solution. There are two aspects of the intelligence of an agentÿ: one oriented towards the fulfilment of a mission, the other oriented towards the objectives that have to be understood and adaptated. The different definitions of the intelligent agents are reflecting this duality. We call here the execution of the mission the agent function. On the other hand, we call the understanding and the adaptation of the objectives the intelligence function. One of the objectives of this article is to propose four attributes for the intelligent agents from their characteristics related to the two types of definitions. From the definitions focused on the agent function, we will try to establish two attributesÿ: a planning through the user and an implementation through the environment. This is applicable in the upstream direct marketing where those agents select their suppliers on the Internet. From the definitions focused on the intelligence function, we propose two other attributes for the intelligent agentsÿ: the user learning and the innovation through the environment which is illustrated through informative advertizing and targeted scanning on the Internet