Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id MAA06986 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Mon, 24 Jan 2000 12:58:04 GMT Message-Id: <b4b1f8830802100427d3@[150.146.65.47]> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Mon, 24 Jan 2000 14:50:36 +0200 To: abss@mmu.ac.uk, memetics@mmu.ac.uk, mailbase@mailbase.ac.uk From: rosaria@pscs2.irmkant.rm.cnr.it (Rosaria Conte) Subject: Call for Papers: Agents'2000 WORKSHOP ON NORMS AND INSTITUTIONS IN MAS Cc: dell@mit.edu Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
Call for Papers
WORKSHOP ON NORMS AND INSTITUTIONS IN MULTI-AGENT SYSTEMS
Barcelona, Spain
June 3 or 4, 2000 (final date TBD)
(Held in conjunction with Autonomous Agents'2000)
In recent years, several researchers have argued for the use of social
abstractions, most notably the concepts of norms and institutions, in
the context of multi-agent systems. Some researchers have produced
interesting theoretical work that attempts to formally define and
clarify concepts of social interaction such as norms, commitments,
obligations, rights, permissions, responsibility, etc. Others have been
developing architectures of agents capable of dealing with the existence
of social norms and electronic institutions in their environment. Yet
others have been exploring the use of electronic institutions in the
design of robust open systems that are capable of coping with
heterogeneity, limited trust and systemic dysfunctions. Finally,
researchers in the area of social simulation have had a long tradition
in using normative concepts and phenomena in order to design, evaluate
and compare different organizational structures.
The purpose of this workshop is to bring together researchers engaged in
various aspects of the study of norms and institutions in the context of
multi-agent systems and help us clarify the relationship between these
various lines of work, understand how we can learn from each other and
articulate an agenda for contributing to the design of better
agent-based systems.
DETAILED DESCRIPTION
Multi-agent systems are increasingly being considered a viable
technological basis for implementing complex, open systems such as
electronic marketplaces, virtual enterprises, military coalition support
systems, etc. The design of open systems in such domains poses a number
of difficult challenges, including the need to cope with unreliable
computational and network infrastructures, the need to address
incompatible assumptions and limited trust among independently developed
agents and the necessity of detecting and responding to systemic
failures.
Human organizations and societies have successfully coped with similar
coordination challenges by developing norms and conventions, that is,
specifications of behavior that all society members are expected to
conform to. In most societies, norms are backed by a variety of social
institutions that enforce law and order (e.g. courts, police), monitor
for and respond to emergencies (e.g. ambulance system), prevent and
recover from unanticipated disasters (e.g. coast guard, firefighters),
etc. In that way, civilized societies allow citizens to utilize
relatively simple and efficient rules of behavior, offloading the
prevention and recovery of many problem types to social institutions
that can handle them efficiently and effectively by virtue of their
economies of scale and widely accepted legitimacy. Successful civil
societies have thus achieved a division of labor between individuals and
institutions that decreases the "barriers to survival" for each citizen,
while helping increase the welfare of the society as a whole.
Several researchers have recognized that the design of open multi-agent
systems can benefit from abstractions analogous to those employed by our
robust and relatively successful societies and organizations. There is a
growing body of work that touches upon the concepts of norms and
institutions in the context of multi-agent systems. This work moves in
several directions, including:
- Theoretical work (definitions of concepts related to norms and
institutions, such as contracts, commitments, obligations, rights,
permissions, responsibility, delegation, etc.; formal notations for
expressing and communicating norms and institutions; etc.)
- Architectural work (architectures of agents with norms; architectures
of electronic institutions, etc.)
- Prototyping and evaluation (prototype agent systems employing norms
and electronic institutions in domains such as electronic commerce,
coalition forces and disaster recovery; experimental evaluation of the
effectiveness of given institutions in the face of heterogeneity,
limited trust and unreliable infrastructure; etc.)
- Social simulation (modeling of social and organizational institutions
using multi-agent systems; use of normative concepts and phenomena in
the design, evaluation and comparison of different organizational
structures, etc.)
WORKSHOP TOPICS
The purpose of this workshop is to help us better understand how these
various lines of work connect to one another and how, together, they can
contribute to the design and implementation of better multi-agent
systems. The topics of the workshop include, but are not limited to:
- Formal definitions of normative concepts
- Notations and languages for communicating norms and institutions
- Architectures of agents with norms
- Architectures of social institutions
- Prototype systems employing the concepts of norms and institutions
- Methodologies for evaluating the effectiveness of norms and electronic
institutions
- Application domains for which norms and institutions are especially
useful
design metaphor
- The use of norms and institutions in open environments
- Norms and institutions in electronic commerce applications
- Adaptive institutions
- Emergence of institutions
- Decentralized vs. centralized institutions and systems of enforcement
- Social simulation and its relationship to electronic institutions
WORKSHOP FORMAT
The format of this full-day workshop will be a combination of
contributed and invited presentations, panels, and discussion among the
participants. There will be a limited number of sessions, each focused
on a specific topic selected among the ones listed above, each including
a small group of papers, with time for brief presentations and ample
opportunities for discussion.
SUBMISSION DETAILS
Those wishing to participate in the workshop should submit an original
research paper. Papers will be peer reviewed by at least two referees
from the workshop program committee. Submitted papers should be new work
that has not been published elsewhere. Paper submissions should include
a separate title page with the title, authors (full address), a 300-400
word abstract, and a list of keywords. The length of submitted papers
must not exceed 12 pages including all figures, tables, and
bibliography. All papers must be written in English. We are negotiating
with publishers in order to publish the best papers of the workshop at a
special issue of a high quality journal.
The authors must send by email the title page of their paper by February
24, 2000 to BOTH of the co-chairs. Submissions must be sent
electronically, as a Postscript, PDF or MSWord format file, by February
28, 2000, again, to BOTH of the co-chairs.
Those wishing to attend without presenting a paper should send a
position paper of up to two pages to the co-chairs. Attendance will, of
necessity, be limited.
TIMETABLE
Title page due February 24
Submissions due February 28
Notifications sent March 29
Camera-ready copies due April 13
Workshop June 3 or 4
WORKSHOP CHAIRS:
Chris Dellarocas Rosaria Conte
MIT Sloan School of Management Institute of Psychology
MIT Room E53-315 National Research Council
Cambridge, MA 02139 Viale Marx 15, I-00137 Rome
USA Italy
Tel. (+1)-617-258-8115 Tel. (+39)-06-86090210
Email: dell@mit.edu Email:
rosaria@pscs2.irmkant.rm.cnr.it
ORGANIZING COMMITTEE:
Les Gasser, University of Michigan, USA
Andrew Jones, University of Oslo, Norway
Michael Huhns, University of South Carolina, USA
Victor Lesser, University of Massachusetts at Amherst, USA
PROGRAM COMMITTEE:
Mihai Barbuceanu, University of Toronto, Canada
Magbus Boman, Stokholm University, Sweden
Jose Carmo, Technical University of Lisbon, Portugal
Cristiano Castelfranchi, National Research Council, Institute of
Psychology, Roma, Italy
Helder Coelho, AgentLink
Frank Dignum, Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands
Mark Klein, MIT, USA
Eugenio Oliveira, University of Porto, Portugal
Juan Antonio Rodriguez-Aguilar, MIT, USA
Giovanni Sartor, Queen's University of Belfast, N. Ireland
Marek Sergot, Imperial College, UK
Carles Sierra, Artificial Intelligence Research Insititute, Barcelona,
Spain
Munindar Singh, University of North Carolina, USA
Gerard Weisbuch, Ecole Normale Superieure, Paris, France
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