Behaviour Regulation and Normative Systems

Abstract

Cooperation is the fundamental underpinning of multi-agent systems, allowing agents to interact to achieve their goals. However, agents must manage the risk associated with interacting with others who have different objectives, or who may fail to fulfill their commitments. There are many ways in which such a desirable social order may be encouraged or even mandated. For example, trust offers a mechanism for modeling and reasoning about reliability, honesty, etc., while organisations and norms provide a framework within which to apply them, and motivations provide a means for representing and reasoning about overall objectives. In this talk, I will consider the role of all these aspects, with a particular focus on norms in regulating behaviour.