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Subject: Tr: Call for Papers: Agents'2000 WORKSHOP ON NORMS AND INSTITUTIONS IN MAS
From: François Bousquet (bousquet@cirad.fr)
Date: jeu fév 03 2000 - 14:58:57 CET
>>
>> 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
>
>Rosaria Conte
>
>National Research Council, Institute of Psychology, V.LE Marx 15, 00137
Roma.
>Division "AI, Cognitive and Interaction Modelling"
>PSS (Project on Social Simulation) -
voice:+39+06+86090210;fax:+39+06+824737
>email: rosaria@pscs2.irmkant.rm.cnr.it - http://ip.rm.cnr.it
>
>University of Siena - Communication Sciences - "Social Psychology"
>
>
>