Electric Elves: Immersing an Agent Organization in a Human Organization

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Within an organization, we envision that agent-based technology will facilitate (and sometimes supervise) all collaborative activities. For a research institution, agentization may facilitate such activities as meeting organization, paper composition, software development, and deployment of people and equipment for out-of-town demonstrations. For a military organization, agentization may enable the teaming of military units and equipment for rapid deployment, the monitoring of the progress of such deployments, and the rapid response to any crises that may arise. To accomplish such goals, we envision the presence of agent proxies for each person within an organization. Thus, for instance, if an organizational crisis requires an urgent deployment of a team of people and equipment, then agent proxies could dynamically volunteer for team membership on behalf of the people or resources they represent, while also ensuring that the selected team collectively possesses sufficient resources and capabilities. The proxies must also manage effi- cient transportation of such resources, the monitoring of the progress of individual participants and of the mission as a whole, and the execution of corrective actions when goals appear to be endangered.