A  special issue of the Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation (JASSS) on:
Starting from Society
- the application of social analogies to computational systems

Co-edited by Bruce Edmonds and Kerstin Dautenhahn
Piblished: 1^st January 2001

• Topic
• Background
• The JASSS Issue
• Co-editors Details

The Topic:

Its purpose is to consider how ideas and analogies drawn from observations of real societies might be applied to computational systems. Recently biology has been a source of inspiration for AI, e.g. spawning the field of evolutionary computation.  Now ideas and analogies drawn from the social sciences are starting to be used in computational systems. This is partly because it is being recognised that controlling interacting societies of artificial agents is difficult - traditional methods can not anticipate the emergent outcomes, so that some researchers are looking to real societies. Another strand is the increasing recognition that much of what we had labelled as individual intelligence derives from the society it inhabits. A third strand can be traced to the influence of social simulation techniques. This symposium will focus on these areas, welcoming especially interdisciplinary work and work grounded in observation of real societies and real problems.

If you are in doubt of the relevence of your paper please contact either of the special issue editors.

Recent Relevant Workshops and Publications:

• a 1997 AAAI Fall symposium on "Socially Intelligent Agents";
• a special issue of Applied Artificial Intelligence on "Socially Intelligent Agents";
• a double special issue of Adaptive Behavior on "Simulation Models of Social Agents";
• a special issue of Computational and Mathematical Organisation Theory on "Social Intelligence";
• a collection within the series Advances in Consciousness Research on "Human Cognition and Social Agent Technology";
• a workshop at the 5th Pacific Rim International Conference on Artificial Intelligenceon "Issues in Cross Cultural Communication: Towards Culturally Situated Agents";
• a workshop in Agents98 on "Agents in interaction - acquiring competencies through imitation" and,
• the 1999 AISB Symposium on "Imitation in Animals and Artefacts".
• The ASIB'00 Starting from Society symposium itself.

The Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation (JASSS)

The Special Issue

        Editorial introduction

        Refereed Articles:

           Kerstin Dautenhahn and Steven J. Coles
           Narrative Intelligence from the Bottom Up: A Computational Framework for the
           Study of Story-Telling in Autonomous Agents

           Alexander Staller and Paolo Petta
           Introducing Emotions into the Computational Study of Social Norms: A First
           Evaluation

           Rosaria Conte and Mario Paolucci
           Intelligent Social Learning

           Dietrich Fliedner
           Six Levels of Complexity

Contact Information: