Knowledge robots, first developed Vinton G. Cref and Robert E. Kahn for National Research Initiatives. Knowbots are programmed by users to scan networks for various kinds of related information, regardless of the language or form in which it expressed. "Knowbots support parallel computations at different sites. They communicate with one another, and with various servers in the network and with users." [Scientific American, September 1991, p.74.] [AS
Sophisticated ``searching'' programs which, given a search string, automatically search many different databases on the Internet and then return the results of the search, sometimes by e-mail. The Knowbot Information Service (KIS) is an experimental service of this kind.