Skip to main content

Advertisement

SpringerLink
Log in

The open agent society as a platform for the user-friendly information society

  • Original Article
  • Published:
AI & SOCIETY Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

A thematic priority of the European Union’s Framework V research and development programme was the creation of a user-friendly information society which met the needs of citizens and enterprises. In practice, though, for example in the case of on-line digital music, the needs of citizens and enterprises may be in conflict. This paper proposes to leverage the appearance of ‘intelligence’ in the platform layer of a layered communications architecture to avoid such conflicts in similar applications in the future. The key idea is that if the intelligence is encapsulated in an agent, then the agents should be organized as a society, and then the rules of the society can be used to ensure ‘responsible’ behaviour. We discuss how an agent society can be used to regulate behaviour in future information trading scenarios, and conclude that this approach offers a ‘third way’ which can satisfy the (reasonable) needs of both citizens and enterprises in the user-friendly information society.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4
Fig. 5

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. http://www.cordis.lu/fp5/src/t-2.htm

  2. http://www.emedialive.com/Articles/ReadArticle.aspx?ArticleID=8302.

  3. Originally called Palladium, http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/2002/jul02/0724palladiumwp. asp

  4. http://www.hyperorg.com/backissues/joho-sep12-02.html

  5. http://www.scriptics.com

  6. http://www.napster.com

  7. http://www.gnutella.org

  8. http://www.gnu.org

  9. Similar clauses are found in Directive 2001/29/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council on the harmonisation of certain aspects of copyright and related rights. Both instruments are based on the WIPO (World Intellectual Property Organization) Treaty article 11 (20 December 1996).

  10. Bing (personal communication) notes that this strategy is relative to culture, especially language. He cites the example of a Japanese producer maintaining that 4 million sales was the threshold for producing a video game for profit, equivalent to the entire population of Norway. Cultural policy is therefore a relevant consideration in this scenario.

References

  • Adams A, Sasse A (1999a) Privacy issues in ubiquitous multimedia environments: wake sleeping dogs, or let them lie? In: Human-computer interaction INTERACT ’99, Proceedings of IFIP TC.13 international conference, Edinburgh, IOS, pp 214–221

  • Adams A, Sasse A (1999b) Taming the wolf in sheep’s clothing: privacy in multimedia communications. Proceedings of ACM Multimedia’99, Orlando

  • Artikis A (2003) Executable specification of open norm-governed computational systems. PhD Thesis. University of London

  • Asimov I (1979) In memory yet green. Doubleday, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Axelrod R (1984) The evolution of cooperation. Basic Books, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Bellotti V (1997) Design for privacy in multimedia computing and communication environments. In: Agre P, Rotenberg M (eds) Technology and privacy: the new landscape. MIT Press, Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  • Bing J, Sartor G (2003) Lovely rita: a scenario. In: Bing J, Sartor G (eds) The law of electronic agents. CompLex 4/03, Unipubskriftserier, Oslo, pp 11–21

  • Borking J, Eck B, van den Siepel P (1999) Intelligent software agents and privacy. A&V-13. Registratiekamer, Den Haag

    CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Brin D (1998) The transparent society. Addison-Wesley, Reading

    Google Scholar 

  • Castelfranchi C (2000) Artificial liars: why computers will (necessarily) deceive us and each other. Ethics Inf Technol 2:113–119

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Castelfranchi C (2001) The social nature of information and the role of trust. In: Klusch M, Zambonelli F (eds) Proceedings cooperative information agents V. Springer, Berlin Heidelberg New York

  • Castelfranchi C, Falcone R (2001) Social trust: a cognitive approach. In: Castelfranchi C, Tan Y-H (eds) Trust and deception in virtual societies. Kluwer, Dordrecht, pp 55–90

    Google Scholar 

  • Chiariglione L (1999) Beyond digital audio and video. In: Presentation at Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine, London

  • Damianou N, Dulay N, Lupu E, Sloman M (2001) The ponder specification language. Workshop on policies for distributed systems and networks (Policy 2001), HP Labs, Bristol

  • Davies S (1997) Re-engineering the right to privacy. In: Agre P, Rotenberg M (eds) Technology and privacy: the new landscape. MIT Press, Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  • Eichmann D (1999) Ethical Web agents. Comput Netw ISDN Syst 28:127–136

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Garfinkel S, Spafford G (1996) Practical UNIX and Internet security. O’Reilly, Calif

    Google Scholar 

  • Giunchiglia E, Lee J, McCain N, Lifschitz V, Turner H (2003) Nonmonotonic causal theories. Artif Intell 153(1–2):49–104

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gladwell M (2000) The tipping point. Little, Brown, London

    Google Scholar 

  • Gray R, Kotz D, Cybenko G, Rus D (1997) Agent tcl. In: Cockayne W, Zyda M (eds) Mobile agents: explanations and examples, chap 4. Manning, pp 58–95

  • Hatfield E, Cacioppo J, Rapson R (1994) Emotional contagion. Cambridge University Press, London

    Google Scholar 

  • Heckman C, Wobbrock J (1998) Liability for autonomous agent design. In: Proceedings autonomous agents AA’98, pp 392–399

  • Heckman C, Wobbrock J (2000) Put your best face forward: anthropomorphic agents, e-commerce consumers and the law. In: Proceedings autonomous agents AA’2000, pp 435–442

  • Hewitt C (1991) Open information systems: semantics for distributed artificial intelligence. Artif Intell 47(1–3):79–106

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  • Iwao T, Wada Y, Okada M, Amamiya M (2002a) Experiments with virtual private community (vpc) framework CIA’02 vol LNCS2446. Springer, Berlin Heidelberg New York

  • Iwao T, Wada Y, Yamasaki S, Shioucji M, Okada M, Amamiya M (2002b) Collaboration among agents in a logical network of peer-to-peer services, SAINT’02. IEEE, pp 6–7

  • Jones A (2002) On the concept of trust. Decis Support Syst 33:225–232

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Jones A, Sergot M (1993) On the characterization of law and computer systems: the normative systems perspective. In: Meyer J-J, Wieringa R (eds) Deontic logic in computer science. Wiley, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Jones A, Sergot M (1996) A formal characterisation of institutionalised power. J Interest Group Pure Appl Logics 4(3):429–455

    CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Kowalski R, Sergot M (1986) A logic-based calculus of events. New Generation Comput 4(1):67–95

    Google Scholar 

  • Lanier J (1995) Agents of alienation. J Conscious Stud 2(1):76–81

    Google Scholar 

  • Lessig L (1999) Open code and open societies. Chicago-Kent Law Rev 74:101–116

    Google Scholar 

  • Mamdani A (2001) Convergence: software agents and information ecosystems. In: Invited talk, BCS conference on intelligent agents, mobile media, Internet and applications, Bradford

  • Matson M (1999) Digital property dictribution: useright not copyright. IEEE Can Rev Summer pp 13–18

    Google Scholar 

  • Meyer J-J, Wieringa R (1993) Deontic logic in computer science. Wiley, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Mullen B, Futrell D, Stairs D, Tice D, Baumeister R, Dawson K, Riordan C, Radloff C, Goethals G, Kennedy J, Rosenfeld P (1986) Newscasters’ facial expressions and voting behaviour of viewers: can a smile elect a president? J Pers Soc Psychol 51:291–295

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Neville B, Pitt J (2004a) A computational framework for social agents in agent mediated e-commerce. In: Omicini A, Petta P, Pitt J (eds) Engineering societies in the agents world IV. Springer, Berlin Heidelberg New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Neville B, Pitt J (2004b) A simulation study of social agents in agent mediated e-commerce. In: Proceedings of the 7th international workshop on trust in agent societies, 19 July, New York

  • O’Brien J (2003) Bill gates, entertainment god. Wired Magazine, Issue 11.07.http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.07/40gates.html

  • Pelachaud C, Bilvi M (2003) Computational model of believable conversational agents. In: Hugeti M-P (ed) Communication in multiagent systems, vol 2650 of LNAI. Springer, Berlin Heidelberg New York, pp 300–317

  • Pitt J (2004) Digital blush: towards shame and embarrassment in multi-agent information trading applications. Cogn Technol Work 6:23–36

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Pitt J, Mamdani A (2001) Some legal aspects of inter-agent communication: from the sincerity condition to ‘ethical’ agents. In: Dignum F, Greaves M (eds) Issues in agent communication. Springer, Berlin Heidelberg New York, pp 46–62

    Google Scholar 

  • Pitt J, Sasse A (2001) Privacy in collaborative multimedia environments. In: Proceedings international conference on media futures, Florence, Italy

  • Pitt J, Arafa Y, Dionisi G, Martin S, Witkowski M (2000) Creating loyalty in e-commerce using agent technology. In: Stanford-Smith B, Kidd P (eds) E-business: issues, applications and developments. IOS Press, Amsterdam

    Google Scholar 

  • Pitt J, Mamdani A, Charlton P (2001) The open agent society and its enemies: a position statement and programme of research. Telematics Inform 18(1):67–87

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Popper K (1962) The open society and its enemies, vol 1. The spell of Plato, 5th edn. Routledge

  • Raab C, Bennett C (1998) The distribution of privacy risks: who needs protection? Inf Soc 14:263–274

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Santos F, Carmo J (1993) A deontic logic representation of contractual obligations. In: Meyer J-J, Wieringa R (eds) Deontic logic in computer science. Wiley, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Schoeman F (1992) Privacy and social freedom. Cambridge University Press, London

    Google Scholar 

  • Searle J (1999) Mind, language and society: philosophy in the real world. Basic Books, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Weld D, Etzioni O (1994) The first law of softbotics.In: Proceedings 12th national conference on artificial intelligence, pp 1042–1047

  • Westmyer S, DiCioccio R, Rubin R (1998) Appropriateness and effectiveness of communiation channels in competent interpersonal interaction. J Commun 48(3):27–48

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

This work has been partially supported by the EU IST FET project ALFEBIITE (IST-1999-10298). Particular thanks in the context of this work are due to partners on the project, Jon Bing, Cristiano Castelfranchi, and Abe Mamdani, and to colleagues on the project Alexander Artikis, Lloyd Kamara and Brendan Neville. Thanks also to Angela Sasse for the insight on privacy issues. The author would finally like to thank the reviewers for their many useful comments and the editors for their help in producing this paper.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Intelligent Systems and Networks Group, Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Imperial College, London, SW7 2BT, UK

    Jeremy Pitt

Authors
  1. Jeremy Pitt
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Jeremy Pitt.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Pitt, J. The open agent society as a platform for the user-friendly information society. AI & Soc 19, 123–158 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-004-0306-1

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-004-0306-1

Keywords

Search

Navigation