>
>                         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: [log in to unmask]                     Email:
> [log in to unmask]
>
> 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: [log in to unmask] - http://ip.rm.cnr.it

University of Siena - Communication Sciences - "Social Psychology"




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