Dialogues Concerning a (Possibly) New Science

The paper relates virtual dialogues about social simulation, with the implicit reference to Galieo\'s \'dialogues concerning two new sciences\'.Social Simulations, Epistemology, Validation, Simulation Methods

Education in Accounting using an Interactive System

This paper represents a summary of a research report and the results of developing an educational software, including a multi-agent system for teaching accounting bases and financial accounting. The paper describes the structure of the multi-agent system, defined as a complex network of s-agents. Each s-agent contains 6 pedagogical agents and a coordinator agent. We have defined a new architecture (BeSGOTE) that extends the BDI architecture for intelligent agents and we have defined a mixing-up relation among the accounts, presenting the way in which it can be used for testing students.Computer Aided Education, Multi-Agent System, Artificial Intelligence, Accounting Education

Pitfalls of Agent-Oriented Development

While the theoretical and experimental foundations of agent-based systems are becoming increasingly well understood, comparatively little effort has been devoted to understanding the pragmatics of (multi-) agent systems development - the everyday reality of carrying out an agent-based development project. As a result, agent system developers are needlessly repeating the same mistakes, with the result that, at best, resources are wasted - at worst, projects fail. This paper identifies the main pitfalls that await the agent system developer, and where possible, makes tentative recommendations for how these pitfalls can be avoided or rectified

Education in Accounting using an Interactive System

This paper represents a summary of a research report and the results of developing an educational software, including a multi-agent system for teaching accounting bases and financial accounting. The paper describes the structure of the multi-agent system, defined as a complex network of s-agents. Each s-agent contains 6 pedagogical agents and a coordinator agent. We have defined a new architecture (BeSGOTE) that extends the BDI architecture for intelligent agents and we have defined a mixing-up relation among the accounts, presenting the way in which it can be used for testing students.Computer Aided Education, Multi-Agent System, Artificial Intelligence, Accounting Education

Agent programming in the cognitive era

It is claimed that, in the nascent ‘Cognitive Era’, intelligent systems will be trained using machine learning techniques rather than programmed by software developers. A contrary point of view argues that machine learning has limitations, and, taken in isolation, cannot form the basis of autonomous systems capable of intelligent behaviour in complex environments. In this paper, we explore the contributions that agent-oriented programming can make to the development of future intelligent systems. We briefly review the state of the art in agent programming, focussing particularly on BDI-based agent programming languages, and discuss previous work on integrating AI techniques (including machine learning) in agent-oriented programming. We argue that the unique strengths of BDI agent languages provide an ideal framework for integrating the wide range of AI capabilities necessary for progress towards the next-generation of intelligent systems. We identify a range of possible approaches to integrating AI into a BDI agent architecture. Some of these approaches, e.g., ‘AI as a service’, exploit immediate synergies between rapidly maturing AI techniques and agent programming, while others, e.g., ‘AI embedded into agents’ raise more fundamental research questions, and we sketch a programme of research directed towards identifying the most appropriate ways of integrating AI capabilities into agent programs

An agent-oriented programming language for computing in context

Context aware intelligent agents are key components in the development of pervasive systems. In this paper, we present an extension of a BDI programming language to support ontological reasoning and ontology-based speech act communication. These extensions were guided by the new requirements brought about by such emerging computing styles. These new features are essential for the development multi-agent systems with context awareness, given that ontologies have been widely pointed out as an appropriate way to model contexts.Applications in Artificial Intelligence - AgentsRed de Universidades con Carreras en Informática (RedUNCI