Social decisions and fairness change when people’s interests are represented by autonomous agents

There has been growing interest on agents that represent people’s interests or act on their behalf such as automated negotiators, self-driving cars, or drones. Even though people will interact often with others via these agent representatives, little is known about whether people’s behavior changes when acting through these agents, when compared to direct interaction with others. Here we show that people’s decisions will change in important ways because of these agents; specifically, we showed that interacting via agents is likely to lead people to behave more fairly, when compared to direct interaction with others. We argue this occurs because programming an agent leads people to adopt a broader perspective, consider the other side’s position, and rely on social norms—such as fairness—to guide their decision making. To support this argument, we present four experiments: in Experiment 1 we show that people made fairer offers in the ultimatum and impunity games when interacting via agent representatives, when compared to direct interaction; in Experiment 2, participants were less likely to accept unfair offers in these games when agent representatives were involved; in Experiment 3, we show that the act of thinking about the decisions ahead of time—i.e., under the so-called “strategy method”—can also lead to increased fairness, even when no agents are involved; and, finally, in Experiment 4 we show that participants were less likely to reach an agreement with unfair counterparts in a negotiation setting. We discuss theoretical implications for our understanding of the nature of people’s social behavior with agent representatives, as well as practical implications for the design of agents that have the potential to increase fairness in society

Smithian Answers to Some Experimental Puzzles

This paper draws attention to the increased use of Adam Smith’s work in the experimental economics literature. It also offers examples of how studying Adam Smith can help formulate possible answers to some otherwise counter-intuitive (if the intuition is based on the Rational-Choice paradigm) experimental results. The first part of the paper presents a short account of how, in recent years, the field has come to recognize the importance of considering other-regarding preferences as well as self-regarding preferences and how it is noticing the wealth of Adam Smith, who dealt with both. The central section of the paper offers examples of how the Smithian apparatus can provide plausible explanatory stories for data from experimental games such as, but not limited to, the Ultimatum Game, the Dictator Game and the Trust Game, which usually cannot be explained using only strict Rational Choice. Smithian resentment, love of praiseworthiness and dread of blameworthiness on the other hand seem to be plausible explanations for the seemingly irrational punishment and generosity observed in these experimental games. Concluding remarks end the essay

Human Behavior Models for Agents in Simulators and Games: Part II Gamebot Engineering with PMFserv

Many producers and consumers of legacy training simulator and game environments are beginning to envision a new era where psycho-socio-physiologic models could be interoperated to enhance their environments\u27 simulation of human agents. This paper explores whether we could embed our behavior modeling framework (described in the companion paper, Part 1) behind a legacy first person shooter 3D game environment to recreate portions of the Black Hawk Down scenario. Section 1 amplifies the interoperability needs and challenges confronting the field, presents the questions that are examined, and describes the test scenario. Sections 2 and 3 review the software and knowledge engineering methodology, respectively, needed to create the system and populate it with bots. Results (Section 4) and discussion (Section 5) reveal that we were able to generate plausible and adaptive recreations of Somalian crowds, militia, women acting as shields, suicide bombers, and more. Also, there are specific lessons learned about ways to advance the field so that such interoperabilities will become more affordable and widespread

10-02 "Care Ethics and Markets: A View from Feminist Economics"

It is common to think of care ethics and justice ethics as being opposed to each other, and also to think of economic life as being opposed to social life. As a result, it may be hard to see how care ethics, seen as interpersonal, could be applicable to business, when the latter is perceived as asocial. This essay uncovers the origins of these beliefs in unhelpful dualistic cognitive habits and in gender-biases in the development of the discipline of economics. In particular, feminist analysis reveals the mythical nature of both "economic man" and the belief in mechanical "profit maximization." The essay calls for unveiling and recognizing the ethical and connected dimensions that already characterize business life, and including these in thinking about how to create a more humane economy.

COIN@AAMAS2015

COIN@AAMAS2015 is the nineteenth edition of the series and the fourteen papers included in these proceedings demonstrate the vitality of the community and will provide the grounds for a solid workshop program and what we expect will be a most enjoyable and enriching debate.Peer reviewe