The concept of "Artificial Intelligence" is of a program which can undergo a learning process within itself and modify its logic as a consequence of its experiences. Whether this ever becomes reality is a curiosity for future generations to ponder.
"Intelligent Agents" appear to be in much the same situation. Quite a lot of the "research" in this direction is focused on robots which search the World Wide Web sites looking for information fitting criteria supplied by a researcher.
The thrust of the ICARIS project in the area of "Intelligent Agents" is not in either of these directions.
Consider a medium sized organisation in a relatively insular market environment such as might occur in North America, Australia and elsewhere in the world. This organisation might trade almost exclusively within just one of these insular market environments. An Australian company might trade exclusively in Australian dollars and an American company in US dollars. The business systems they have implemented on their computers would therefore not need the functions to handle different currencies.
Now, what would happen if, in the Automated Business Process Scenario, a European organisation suddenly initiated a purchasing process with a US supplier, stating a purchase price in Belgian Francs? This is possible if both organisations have implemented BSI (Business Process Interoperation) technology. The US organisation's sales process would probably interpret the price as US dollars.
If both organisations are using BSI technology for their automated interoperation, it is possible for the responding business system to determine that the incoming transaction is using functionality not implemented in its business process.
What can be done to enable the responding business system to recognise the differences in functionality compared to the initiating process?
If the functionality difference can be identified, what kind of automated adjustment can be made to the responding business process to handle the incoming transaction correctly, in spite of the functionality deficiency or difference?
So the "Intelligent Agent" in this scenario is the business process which monitors incoming transactions, identifies the functionality differentials, decides on a course of action and modifies the action of the responding business process accordingly.
This sounds far too good to be true, but we have achieved a few small steps toward this goal. Time will tell whether it can become a reality.