Two leading Japanese companies have developed software that automatically settles complex negotiations between buyers and sellers on a network. Mitsubishi Electric Corp and Tokyo Electric Power Co developed a system that enables participants to enter their conditions for buying or selling on a PC and leave the haggling to the software, according to Nihon Keizai Shimbun. When it acts for the buyer, the ‘agent’ software compares sellers’ offers and places temporary orders accordingly. It will ask for adjustment of various items until the original conditions are met. Intelligent agents are the center of a major research effort and IBM has created a $10m Institute for Advanced Commerce (CI No 3,369) to investigate what will happen when intelligent agents will engage in complex transactions on behalf of their human owners – or on behalf of the devices on which they reside.
