...communication.
We don't consider even sophisticated interaction with disk drives and printers to be communication.

...etc.
One rather extreme and slightly dismaying example of an on-line assistant might be the H.A.L. 9000 in 2001: A Space Odyssey.

...command.
CPlex actually requires a very expensive machine-specific license. However, we note (without advocating) that by setting up a BSA on the machine on which CPlex has been installed, it is trivial to allow anyone, anywhere, to access CPlex via a simple SodaBot application agent.

...Group.
I worked at Bell Labs from the the middle of May through the first week of September during 1993.

...summer.
Steven Ketchpel actually implemented an earlier, complete version of the VisitorBot on top of a simple mail-reading agent developed by Henry Kautz.

...agents)
I wrote several other software agents at Bell Labs over the summer. Most notable is the Bot which allowed me to edit my SM thesis proposal at Bell Labs and process it remotely at MIT. It notified me of any errors encountered during text processing at MIT, displayed the final results on my Bell Labs' workstation, etc.

mhcoen@ai.mit.edu
Mon Oct 24 13:40:13 EDT 1994