The Secret Agent Man

IBM Turns Over a New Leaf with Ginkgo
By Don Barker

My job has taken me everywhere from the tropical paradises in the Caribbean to the wild jungles of the Congo, but this month's assignment has given me a whole new appreciation for vegetation, especially leaves. I have just uncovered information about a powerful new agent from IBM called Ginkgo (apparently, named after the herbal leaf that improves memory). Ginkgo is a "Smart Assistant" that uses a number of freshly patented technologies to quickly and efficiently learn about the tasks people (and machines) perform and then make helpful recommendations based on this knowledge. 

Like the leaf, Ginkgo is designed to enhance your memory by reminding you of the most productive ways to complete a task. In addition, it can share with you how others have successfully solved the same problem and even predict your behavior. For example, IBM is using Ginkgo to develop a decision support system called Physician's Assistant. It can learn about what drugs a doctor prescribes for a given situation and recalls the doctor's own practice pattern, providing an intelligent default suggestion (view screenshot).

IBM is also working on a Physician's Consultation prototype that uses Ginkgo technology to intelligently mediate communication among doctors and make recommendations based on what recognized experts have done in a particular situation. These two systems clearly show how Ginkgo can assist users in recalling relevant information and sharing expertise.

The predictive abilities of this agent are best revealed by e-commerce applications, where anticipating buyer behavior is crucial. For instance, if you  order pizza Friday nights to take home, a Ginkgo-enabled agent could automatically place the order. What's more, the agent would know what toppings you like, the time you typically pick-up the pizza, and even suggest pepperoni because it's on sale, and the agent knows how much you like pepperoni. (Just imagining the espionage implication for this new technology makes me salivate. Of course, so does pizza.)

Ginkgo was developed by a team of IBM scientists in Research Triangle Park, NC. I recently spoke with three of them - Manny Aparicio, Yen-Min Huang, and Jim Fleming. Yen-Min told me that the major benefits of this memory-based agent are its incredibly small size (under 80KB), scalability, speed, and portability (written in 100% Java). In fact, Manny says Ginkgo is so efficient and scalable that IBM could "[put] it on a chip."

• How does Ginkgo work?
• What can Ginkgo do?

IBM offers Ginkgo technology as part of a custom business solution. "We found that the toolkit business is weak...but businesses are looking for the expertise of putting it [all] together..." says Manny. As a consequence, IBM has developed a complete customer service package that includes, planning, consultation, programming implementation, and project management to help ensure that Ginkgo, and other smart technologies, can be successfully applied to many different application, intranet, or even enterprise scenarios.

If you want to know how Ginkgo can be applied to your business needs, contact Linda Guyer at the IBM Intelligent Agent Center lguyer@us.ibm.com or (607) 752-6024. Or, if you just want more information on this new technology, visit the IBM Intelligent Agent Center at http://www.networking.ibm.com/iag/iaghome.html. 

This is release 007.02 over and out. If you have an agent you want to expose, drop me a line at dibarker@geocities.com. But be careful what you say or you'll give yourself away.

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Secret Agent Man appears in PCAI Magazine