language: en

A Multi-Agent Referral System for Matchmaking

Leonard N. Foner
MIT Media Lab
20 Ames St, E15-305 Cambridge, MA 02139

[617/253-9601]

ABSTRACT Many important and useful applications for software agents require multiple agents on a network that communicate with each other. Such agents must find each other and perform a useful joint computation without having to know about every other such agent on the network. This paper describes a matchmaker system, designed to find people with similar interests and introduce them to each other. The matchmaker is designed to introduce everyone , unlike conventional Internet media which only allow those who take the time to speak public to be known. The paper details how the agents that make it up the match-making system can function in a decentralized fashion, yet can group themselves into clusters which reflect their users interests; these clusters are then used to make introductions or allow users to send messages to others who share their inter ests. The algorithm uses referrals from one agent to another in the same fashion that word-of-mouth is used when people are looking for an expert. A prototype of the system has been implemented, and results of its use are presented.

KEYWORDS: agents, collaborative filtering, CSCW, joint computation, ecology of computation, user modeling, intelli gent systems, information retrieval, distributed AI, Internet.

INTRODUCTION