Editing Software agent (section)

==Impact of software agents==
Software agents may offer various benefits to their end users by automating complex or repetitive tasks.<ref>{{cite journal
 | last1         = Serenko
 | first1        = A.
 | last2         = Detlor
 | first2        = B.
 | year          = 2004
 | title         = Intelligent agents as innovations
 |journal= Artificial Intelligence & Society
 | volume        = 18 | issue        = 4
 | pages         = 364–381
 | url           = https://www.aserenko.com/papers/Serenko_Detlor_AI_and_Society.pdf
}}</ref> However, there are organizational and cultural impacts of this technology that need to be considered prior to implementing software agents.

===Organizational impact===
===Work contentment and job satisfaction impact===
People like to perform easy tasks providing the sensation of success unless the repetition of the simple tasking is affecting the overall output. In general implementing software agents to perform administrative requirements provides a substantial increase in work contentment, as administering their own work does never please the worker. The effort freed up serves for a higher degree of engagement in the substantial tasks of individual work. Hence, software agents may provide the basics to implement self-controlled work, relieved from hierarchical controls and interference.<ref>{{cite web
 | last1         = Adonisi
 | first1        = M.
 | year          = 2003
 | title         = The relationship between Corporate Entrepreneurship, Market Orientation, Organisational Flexibility and Job satisfaction
 | publisher     = Fac.of Econ.and Mgmt.Sci., Univ.of Pretoria
 | type          = Diss.
 | url           = http://upetd.up.ac.za/thesis/available/etd-11252004-150603/unrestricted/00thesis.pdf
}}</ref> Such conditions may be secured by application of software agents for required formal support.

===Cultural impact===
The cultural effects of the implementation of software agents include trust affliction, skills erosion, privacy attrition and social detachment. Some users may not feel entirely comfortable fully delegating important tasks to software applications. Those who start relying solely on intelligent agents may lose important skills, for example, relating to information literacy. In order to act on a user's behalf, a software agent needs to have a complete understanding of a user's profile, including his/her personal preferences. This, in turn, may lead to unpredictable privacy issues. When users start relying on their software agents more, especially for communication activities, they may lose contact with other human users and look at the world with the eyes of their agents. These consequences are what agent researchers and users must consider when dealing with intelligent agent technologies.<ref>{{cite journal
 | last1         = Serenko
 | first1        = A.
 | last2         = Ruhi
 | first2        = U.
 | last3         = Cocosila
 | first3        = M.
 | year          = 2007
 | title         = Unplanned effects of intelligent agents on Internet use: Social Informatics approach
 |journal= Artificial Intelligence & Society
 | volume        = 21 | issue        = 1–2
 | pages         = 141–166
 | url           = https://www.aserenko.com/papers/AI_Society_Serenko_Social_Impacts_of_Agents.pdf
}}</ref>

===History===
The concept of an agent can be traced back to [[Actor model|Hewitt's Actor Model]] (Hewitt, 1977) - "A self-contained, interactive and concurrently-executing object, possessing internal state and communication capability."{{citation needed|date=August 2023}}

To be more academic, software agent systems are a direct evolution of Multi-Agent Systems (MAS). MAS evolved from [[Distributed Artificial Intelligence]] (DAI), Distributed Problem Solving (DPS) and Parallel AI (PAI), thus inheriting all characteristics (good and bad) from DAI and [[AI]].

[[John Sculley]]'s 1987 "[[Knowledge Navigator]]" video portrayed an image of a relationship between end-users and agents. Being an ideal first, this field experienced a series of unsuccessful top-down implementations, instead of a piece-by-piece, bottom-up approach. The range of agent types is now (from 1990) broad: WWW, search engines, etc.