Intelligent software design: Challenges and solutions

The radical changes in information technology are reshaping the software engineering environment, especially in respect to design and development of the intelligent systems. We explicate the technical and social issues related to the emergence of the new forms of intelligent software and consider challenges arising from the growing technical capabilities of information technology tools vs. corresponding social responsibilities. The discussion is focused mostly on the phenomena of e-commerce and the Semantic Web. The issues discussed range from purely technical to ethical and legal.