Flexible autonomy and context in human-agent collectives

Human-agent collectives (HACs) are collaborative relationships between humans and software agents that are formed to meet the individual and collective goals of their members. In general, different members of a HAC should have differing degrees of autonomy in determining how a goal is to be achieved, and the degree of autonomy that should be enjoyed by each member of the collective varies with context. This thesis explores how norms can be used to achieve context sensitive flexible autonomy in HACs. Norms can be viewed as defining standards of ideal behaviour. In the form of rules and codes, they are widely used to coordinate and regulate activity in human organisations, and more recently they have also been proposed as a coordination mechanism for multi-agent systems (MAS). Norms therefore have the potential to form a common framework for coordination and control in HACs. The thesis develops a novel framework in which group and individual norms are used to specify both the goal to be achieved by a HAC and the degree of autonomy of the HAC and/or of its members in achieving a goal. The framework allows members of a collective to create norms specifying how a goal should (or should not) be achieved, together with sanctions for non-compliance. These norms form part of the decision making context of both the humans and agents in the collective. A prototype implementation of the framework was evaluated using the Colored Trails test-bed in a scenario involving mixed human-agent teams. The experiments confirmed that norms can be used for coordination of HACs and to facilitate context related flexible autonomy

Flexible autonomy and context in human-agent collectives

Human-agent collectives (HACs) are collaborative relationships between humans and software agents that are formed to meet the individual and collective goals of their members. In general, different members of a HAC should have differing degrees of autonomy in determining how a goal is to be achieved, and the degree of autonomy that should be enjoyed by each member of the collective varies with context. This thesis explores how norms can be used to achieve context sensitive flexible autonomy in HACs. Norms can be viewed as defining standards of ideal behaviour. In the form of rules and codes, they are widely used to coordinate and regulate activity in human organisations, and more recently they have also been proposed as a coordination mechanism for multi-agent systems (MAS). Norms therefore have the potential to form a common framework for coordination and control in HACs. The thesis develops a novel framework in which group and individual norms are used to specify both the goal to be achieved by a HAC and the degree of autonomy of the HAC and/or of its members in achieving a goal. The framework allows members of a collective to create norms specifying how a goal should (or should not) be achieved, together with sanctions for non-compliance. These norms form part of the decision making context of both the humans and agents in the collective. A prototype implementation of the framework was evaluated using the Colored Trails test-bed in a scenario involving mixed human-agent teams. The experiments confirmed that norms can be used for coordination of HACs and to facilitate context related flexible autonomy

Human-agent collectives

We live in a world where a host of computer systems, distributed throughout our physical and information environments, are increasingly implicated in our everyday actions. Computer technologies impact all aspects of our lives and our relationship with the digital has fundamentally altered as computers have moved out of the workplace and away from the desktop. Networked computers, tablets, phones and personal devices are now commonplace, as are an increasingly diverse set of digital devices built into the world around us. Data and information is generated at unprecedented speeds and volumes from an increasingly diverse range of sources. It is then combined in unforeseen ways, limited only by human imagination. People’s activities and collaborations are becoming ever more dependent upon and intertwined with this ubiquitous information substrate. As these trends continue apace, it is becoming apparent that many endeavours involve the symbiotic interleaving of humans and computers. Moreover, the emergence of these close-knit partnerships is inducing profound change. Rather than issuing instructions to passive machines that wait until they are asked before doing anything, we will work in tandem with highly inter-connected computational components that act autonomously and intelligently (aka agents). As a consequence, greater attention needs to be given to the balance of control between people and machines. In many situations, humans will be in charge and agents will predominantly act in a supporting role. In other cases, however, the agents will be in control and humans will play the supporting role. We term this emerging class of systems human-agent collectives (HACs) to reflect the close partnership and the flexible social interactions between the humans and the computers. As well as exhibiting increased autonomy, such systems will be inherently open and social. This means the participants will need to continually and flexibly establish and manage a range of social relationships. Thus, depending on the task at hand, different constellations of people, resources, and information will need to come together, operate in a coordinated fashion, and then disband. The openness and presence of many distinct stakeholders means participation will be motivated by a broad range of incentives rather than diktat. This article outlines the key research challenges involved in developing a comprehensive understanding of HACs. To illuminate this agenda, a nascent application in the domain of disaster response is presented

Insurgent Urbanism: alternative modes of production and appropriation of urban space in the outskirts of Sao Paulo

This paper presents a research on new forms of appropriation of public space through actions that are self-managed and crosscutting to government arrangements, led by decentralized groups, organized so anarchic and horizontal, flexible and situational, which has been called in Brazil as "urban collectives". Because of theirs critical stance to the status quo and limiting forms of access to urban, these groups propose alternative ways to use, look, plan, discuss, build and inhabit the city, we call: insurgent urbanism. Therefore, this paper seeks to understand the appropriation of public spaces by these groups in the outskirts of Sao Paulo, on the margins of large investments primarily cultural. We presents some mapping of these groups and their actions in the North, East and South zones of the city, which have significant and increasing number of micro urban interventions with strong political character, but which are still not known because they are off-axis "center - west", recognized as a creativity axis. In these periphery areas, the key element is the functionality and the potential for organization to fight, argue and claim for public policy for the communities of the suburbs. The aim is to understand its legitimacy as a social organization, and the public sphere concepts tied to the emergence of these groups in Brazil. By mapping the alternatives that has been made in these areas, one can compare them with the actions developed in the most valued areas of the city, identifying conceptual approaches and significant differences in these actions. The historical context in which the "urban collectives" arised in Brazil is from the 1990s, in a productive post-restructuring period, which resulted in the deepening socio-spatial inequalities in São Paulo. Also during this period, the construction of shopping malls and gated communities grew; there was the spread of the culture of fear, with expansion of buildings with prison walls, private security and traffic controls, fragmenting the city and aggravating inequality between extremes of the population. At this time, the excluded population manifests itself, creating a real "civil war for places", ie a clash between the city "militarized" versus the resumption of public space by the population, especially through cultural movements in the periphery. The popular uprisings, spontaneous interventions or ephemeral architectures, ie, micro urban interventions represent demands and emergencies, with the motto citizens as key player in the city's production. Network communication and increased access to information influence largely social organizations from that time, becoming the main tool used by the collectives for their articulation. One should note that the forms of collective action currently differ from those of the last century, trade unions, for example. Self-managed, decentralized, with horizontal hierarchical, allowing certain nomadism, they use short-term and tactical actions, to reach long-term changes. Thus, this research aims to provide conclusive data not only for the understanding of these experiences in the peripheral areas of São Paulo, but mainly to provide support to the urbanist generates solutions that really meet the demand of the population, respecting cultural differences of each region

Group Agency and Artificial Intelligence

The aim of this exploratory paper is to discuss a sometimes recognized but still under-appreciated parallel between group agency and artificial intelligence. As both phenomena involve non-human goal-directed agents that can make a difference to the social world, they raise some similar moral and regulatory challenges, which require us to rethink some of our anthropocentric moral assumptions. Are humans always responsible for those entities’ actions, or could the entities bear responsibility themselves? Could the entities engage in normative reasoning? Could they even have rights and a moral status? I will tentatively defend the (increasingly widely held) view that, under certain conditions, artificial intelligent systems, like corporate entities, might qualify as responsible moral agents and as holders of limited rights and legal personhood. I will further suggest that regulators should permit the use of autonomous artificial systems in high-stakes settings only if they are engineered to function as moral (not just intentional) agents and/or there is some liability-transfer arrangement in place. I will finally raise the possibility that if artificial systems ever became phenomenally conscious, there might be a case for extending a stronger moral status to them, but argue that, as of now, this remains very hypothetical

Managing energy tariffs with agents: a field study of a future smart energy system at home

© 2015 ACM.Interactive autonomous systems are likely to be more involved in future energy systems to assist human users. Given this, we prototyped a future scenario in which householders are assisted in switching electricity tariffs by an agent-based interactive system. The system uses real-time electricity monitoring to instantiate a scenario where participants may have to make, or delegate to their agent (in a variety ways), tariff switching decisions given uncertainty about their own consumption. We carried out a field trial with 12 households for 6 weeks in order to study the notion of autonomy. The results show nuanced ways in which monitoring system performance and taking control is balanced in everyday practice. Our field study provides promising directions for future use of smart systems that help householders manage their energy

Culture, Power, and Control: A Discussion of Autonomy and Responsibility

The purpose of this thesis is to explore how power, control, autonomy, and responsibility are active participants in culture and daily human life. First, I discuss two understandings of power, structured and diffused. I examine some different techniques of power that help support and reproduce the current power systems in place and how historically, these systems have been predominantly unjust. I then discuss an alternative view of power that incorporates both structured and diffused forms of power. I explain why this new understanding of power could be more useful in actively shifting the current unjust power structures present in the world today towards power structures that are more just. I build this argument using some of Michel Foucault and Noam Chomsky\u27s explorations of power. From there, I explore how understanding power can affect how people understand and practice human autonomy and develop or agentic skills. Finally, I use a collective conception of autonomy and the disparate effects of privilege to investigate how responsibility can apply to people individually and collectively

A robot swarm assisting a human fire-fighter

Emergencies in industrial warehouses are a major concern for fire-fighters. The large dimensions, together with the development of dense smoke that drastically reduces visibility, represent major challenges. The GUARDIANS robot swarm is designed to assist fire-fighters in searching a large warehouse. In this paper we discuss the technology developed for a swarm of robots assisting fire-fighters. We explain the swarming algorithms that provide the functionality by which the robots react to and follow humans while no communication is required. Next we discuss the wireless communication system, which is a so-called mobile ad-hoc network. The communication network provides also the means to locate the robots and humans. Thus, the robot swarm is able to provide guidance information to the humans. Together with the fire-fighters we explored how the robot swarm should feed information back to the human fire-fighter. We have designed and experimented with interfaces for presenting swarm-based information to human beings