Most agent aficionados imagine a world in which agents buy things. That means entrusting them with money or credit, and some kind of power of attorney so they can make contracts. That requires a secure system. General Magic, using technology licensed from RSA Data Security, an encryption specialist in California, hopes to provide this. Using unforgeable digital fingerprints, agents could vouch for their masters' identity, and prove that they had not been corrupted.
Telephone companies are interested in giving agents room to work.
NTT is planning something similar in Japan. Dr Maes at MIT favours agents that can program themselves. In the Media Lab everyone has an agent continuously looking over his shoulder, observing which electronic mail he reads, when he arranges meetings and what news he finds interesting. After a while the agent picks up patterns and starts to automate tasks on the user's behalf. There is a problem.