How software can act as an assistant to the user rather than a tool, by learning from interaction and by proactively anticipating the user's

The Software Agents group investigates a new paradigm for software that acts like an assistant to a user of an interactive interface rather than simply as a tool. While not necessarily as intelligent as a human agent, agent software can learn from interaction with the user, and proactively anticipate the user's needs. We build prototype agent systems in a wide variety of domains, including text and graphic editing, Web browsing, e-commerce, information visualization, and more.