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Knowledge Management Tools 299

Adaptivity The capacity to change and improve according to the experiences accumu-
lated. This has to do with memory and learning. An agent learns from its user and
progressively improves in performing its tasks. The most experimental bots even
develop their own personalities and make decisions based upon past experiences.
Cooperation The interactivity between agent and user is fundamentally different from
the one-way working of ordinary software.
There are many knowledge management applications that make use of intelligent
agents (e.g., see Elst et al. 2004). These include personalized information manage-
ment (such as fi ltering e-mail), electronic commerce (such as locating information
for purchasing and buying), and management of complex commercial and indus-
trial processes (such as scheduling appointments and air traffi c control). These
tasks/applications can generally be grouped into fi ve categories ( Khoo, Tor, and Lee
1998 ):
Watcher agents Look for specifi c information
Learning agents Tailor to an individual ’ s preferences by learning from the user ’ s past
behavior
Shopping agents Compare “ the best price for an item ”
Information retrieval agents Help the user to “ search for information in an intelligent
fashion ”
Helper agents Perform tasks autonomously without human interaction.

In the age of computers, information is readily available on the Internet, whether
it is useful or useless. There is so much data available that we often claim to be over-
loaded with information. Having too much data can cause as much trouble as having
no data, as we must shift through so much information to get what we need. We can
categorize this information overload problem into two divisions:
Information fi ltering We must go through an enormous amount of information to fi nd
the small portion that is relevant to us.
Information gathering There is not enough information available to us and we have
to search long and hard to fi nd what we need.
Information fi ltering is a particularly important function in KM, as users need a
way of fi ltering these data into a more manageable situation. Knowledge workers (such
as managers, technical professionals, and marketing personnel) need information in
a timely manner as it can greatly affect their success. Tasks that are redundant or
routine need to be minimized by some individuals that can otherwise spend their time
more productively ( Roesler and Hawkins 1994 ).