A Real-Life Experiment in Creating an Agent Marketplace

Software agents help people with time-consuming activities. One relatively unexplored area of application is that of agents that buy and sell on behalf of users. We recently conducted a real-life experiment in creating an agent marketplace, using a slighly modified version of the Kasbah system. Approximately 200 participants intensively interacted with the system over a one-day (six-hour) period. This paper describes the set-up of the experiment, the architecture of the electronic market and the behaviours of the agents. We discuss the rationale behind the design decisions and analyze the results obtained. We conclude with a discussion of current experiments involving thousands of users interacting with the agent marketplace over a long period of time, and speculate on the long-range impact of this technology upon society and the economy.

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