Abstract:
A virtual agent may obviously benefit from having an up-to-date model of his environment of activity. The model may include actual users' profiles, a dynamic environment characteristic or some assumptions being accepted by default. However, the agent doesn't have to stick to one model only, he can possess a set of complementary beliefs, both learned and assumed. A hierarchy of beliefs for an e-commerce agent is proposed in this paper. When the agent's knowledge on the most specific (and useful) level turns out to be insufficient or inaccurate, he can always use some knowledge of a more general kind.

Keywords: virtual agents, autonomous agents, multiagent environments, user modeling, learning, e-commerce.

Computational Intelligence Group @ Technical University of Clausthal
Human Media Interaction Group @ University of Twente
Computer Science Group @ University of Gdansk	Last modified 2001-09-25