Intelligent Software Agents - Are We Ready?

Anti-Luddite writes In an article on the Internet Evolution site, analyst Tom Nolle discusses the potential of 'Intelligent Software Agent (ISA)' technology. He points to specific types such as 'search assistant ISAs,' which will inevitably flop before their potential is realized. He speaks favorably of the 'mobile ISA' which he says, 'involves dispatching mobile agents from one computer and delivering them to a remote computer for execution.' While hailing the potential of this new generation of agent technology, Nolle seems skeptical about our ability to prepare for and handle its emergence, particularly because of flaws in the agent research community."

holy shit!

[ILuvRamen]

That has got to be the stupidest "yep, it's gonna happen" post I've ever read in my entire life. So I wanna process something but can't do it on my comp so the app sends out the executable data to a server, executes it, and sends back the result faster than my PC could have done it. Well here's a little question I ask to the person saying this is gonna take off. What happens when I send some modified data to the your server farm to process and it's actually a replicating virus. I say thanks for the DOS headquarters, guys. And don't anyone dare say "oh, well they'll 100% protect it so only their code can run" cuz that's not gonna happen. Plus besides the obvious security nightmare, I can only imagine the cost for this type of software when you're basically renting a server. Either that or you can only use the app for a certain amount of time or they'll charge you more? Nobody's gonna put up with that kinda of business model. Oh and I don't think companies would feel comfortable sending their customer data and credit card transactions off to be processed somewhere else and just hope nobody records the data. Let's say MS Office 2010 lets you process your huge customer excel sheet mail merges and someone at the server place decides hmmm I'm gonna record everyone's data and sell it to spammers! I can think of like 10 other ideas why this is the stupidest software idea on Earth but I'm sick of typing.

Re:holy shit!

[coaxial]

Well here's a little question I ask to the person saying this is gonna take off. What happens when I send some modified data to the your server farm to process and it's actually a replicating virus. I say thanks for the DOS headquarters, guys. And don't anyone dare say "oh, well they'll 100% protect it so only their code can run" cuz that's not gonna happen.

It's called proof signed code. It's been around. Read up [acm.org], and get a clue.

Let's say MS Office 2010 lets you process your huge customer excel sheet mail merges and someone at the server place decides hmmm I'm gonna record everyone's data and sell it to spammers!

It's called virtualization. It's been around. Read up [wikipedia.org], and get a clue.

I can think of like 10 other ideas why this is the stupidest software idea on Earth but I'm sick of typing.

And I'm sure they're all as informed as these.