AGENCY: English Interaction with Intelligent Agents -- see Outline

Technical Abstract

Our proposed Agency web site encapsulates a three-part model of English language processing, useful for adding dialog-mode I/O capabilities to authorized intelligent agents running anywhere on the Internet.   An operator controls an agent using this paradigm:
 
• A typed English paragraph is transformed by Agency into a high-level script
• The script goes to the agent, which interprets it to create a returned response
• Agency displays the response in an annotated web form soliciting another input

To make this work, the Agency asks an agent’s developer to honor a complex API.  It defines an evolving dialog context by modeling the microworld the agent “understands” in terms of partial-order PLANS and related English vocabulary.   That combination lets Agency create its scripts, which are executed jointly by the agent, the operator, a planning module, other devices, and/or additional modeled groups of men and machines.

As each dialog proceeds, Agency records it in formally defined metadata logs.  This enables knowledge acquisition by other agents; "smart" mission planning and tracking applications; rule-based searches for related data and processes; and improved methods for man-machine communication within each workgroup Agency serves.

Anticipated Benefits/Potential Commercial Applications

Our national power to exploit intelligent agents and robots is impeded by our inability to easily communicate with them.  This new NLP tool lets existing plans, support text, and subject matter experts take up the slack, enabling automation advances in aerospace, transportation, defense, and manufacturing applications; commercial web service discovery; planning and scheduling tools; and workgroup-customized assistants and search agents.