The idea is to see what they are studying so that I know what to watch for. A couple of years ago, Sujeet Chand, Rockwell Automation SVP and CTO, told me about autonomous agents. So, I've kept watch.
Yesterday I wrote about the TED talk about autonomous robots from the University of Pennsylvania. Today I listened to this podcast from IT Conversations that also discusses agents. Very interesting. Prof. Subramanian Ramamoorthy worked at National Instruments early in his career and provides some insights on the foundational ideas of that company as background.