Socially Conscious Decision Making

For individually motivated agents to work collaboratively to satisfy shared goals, they must make decisions about actions and intentions that take into account their commitments to group activities. This paper examines the role of social consciousness in the process of reconciling intentions to do group-related actions with other, conflicting intentions. We operationalize the notion of social consciousness and provide a first attempt to formally add social consciousness to a cooperative decision-making model. We define a measure of social consciousness; describe its incorporation into the SPIRE experimental system, a simulation environment that allows the process of intention reconciliation in team contexts to be studied; and present results of several experiments that investigate the interaction in decision-making of measures of group and individual good. In particular, we investigate the effect of varying levels of social consciousness on the utility of the group and the individuals it comprises. A key finding is that an intermediate level of social consciousness yields better results in certain circumstances than an extreme commitment. We suggest preliminary principles for designers of collaborative agents based on the results.Engineering and Applied Science

Intention Reconciliation by Collaborative Agents

Research on resource-bounded agents has established that rational agents need to be able to revise their commitments in the light of new opportunities. In the context of collaborative activities, rational agents must be able to reconcile their intentions to do team-related actions with other, conflicting intentions. The SPIRE experimental system allows the process of intention reconciliation in team contexts to be simulated and studied. Prior work with SPIRE examined the effect of team norms, environmental factors, and agent utility functions on individual and group outcomes for homogeneous groups of agents. This paper extends these results to situations involving heterogeneous groups in which agents use different utility functions. The paper provides new illustrations of the ways in which SPIRE can reveal unpredicted interactions among the variables involved, and it suggests preliminary principles for designers of collaborative agents.Engineering and Applied Science

An Action Design Research Study on Responsible Innovation Teaching and Training for Information Systems Students

While information systems organizations recognize the importance of incorporating responsible innovation into their activities, they often face difficulty implementing this practice because employees lack the required knowledge and skills, particularly the capacity for reflexivity and reflection. This paper aims to accelerate responsible innovation teaching and training for information systems students to expedite the process of positive change for sustainability. Using the action design research methodology and the responsible innovation lens, we developed a workshop enabling information systems students to form measurable reflection skills. The workshop evaluation suggests that learning took place and that students are willing to adopt responsible innovation in their future workplaces. A set of design guidelines is proposed to guide further training programs to enhance students’ ability to address complex challenges responsibly. This paper answers the call for more impactful information systems research to address societal and environmental challenges and enriches the literature on sustainable social development and business practices

The Influence of Social Norms and Social Consciousness on Intention Reconciliation

Research on resource-bounded agents has established that rational agents need to be able to revise their commitments in light of new opportunities. In the context of collaborative activities, rational agents must be able to reconcile their intentions to do team-related actions with other, conflicting intentions. The SPIRE experimental system allows the process of intention reconciliation in team contexts to be simulated and studied. Initial work with SPIRE examined the impact of environmental factors and agent utility functions on individual and group outcomes in the context of one set of social norms governing collaboration. This paper extends those results by further studying the effect of environmental factors and the agents' level of social consciousness and by comparing the impact of two different types of social norms on agent behavior and outcomes. The results show that the choice of social norms influences the accuracy of the agents' responses to varying environmental factors, as well as the effectiveness of social consciousness and other aspects of agents' utility functions. In experiments using heterogeneous groups of agents, both sets of norms were susceptible to the free-rider effect. However, the gains of the less responsible agents were minimal, suggesting that agent designers would have little incentive to design agents that deviate from the standard level of responsibility to the group.Engineering and Applied Science

A Two-level Framework for Coalition Formation via Optimization and Agent Negotiation

Proceedings - IEEE/WIC/ACM International Conference on Intelligent Agent Technology. IAT 2004441-44

Enabling 'just' forms of regeneration in Woodstock, Cape Town

The dominance of market-led regeneration has the ability to incapacitate the working class individuals' ability to remain in central inner-city neighbourhoods. The inner-city neighbourhood of Woodstock in Cape Town appears to reflect this problem through private sector development that results in the increase of property prices to the detriment of low-income residents. Research indicates that a large proportion of Woodstock residents cannot afford the resulting increase in cost of living, and resort to living in temporary relocated areas remote from economic opportunities and social amenities. Municipal planners are unable to solve proceeding issues from this type of 'unjust' regeneration, however, it is integral for them to enable more 'just' forms of regeneration which mitigates the impact on lower-income residents. In order to respond to this problem, the present study draws largely from Fainstein's (2010) concept of the 'Just City' which reflect the principles of equity, diversity and democracy. In turn, a theoretical framework was established which assessed the extent to which Woodstock performs as a 'Just City'. The case study and oral history data collection method were used. Research techniques included semistructured in-depth interviews, non-participant-observations, mapping techniques of the current situation, document analysis, and an oral history interview. In addition, informal conversations and personal communication, also played a role in this study. Key findings reveal how Woodstock lacks in a number of requirements to indicate a strong presence of urban justice. Regarding equity; there are minimal affordable housing units and a high demand for social housing. Non-Governmental Organisations take the lead in finding bottom-up strategies to benefit marginalised residents. Furthermore, the Urban Development Zone Tax-incentive does not benefit a wide range of individuals beyond long-time property holders. Regarding diversity; although varied public spaces exist, their 'gated' character reveals an inherent social fragmentation. Despite this, zoning, and land-uses speak towards mixed-used and inclusionary potential. Regarding democracy; residents have representation through activist organisations, yet are still not on an equal footing when it comes to decision-making. In order for planners to enable 'just' forms of regeneration, recommendations are made to create a social housing stock, recast the current urban development tax incentive, and prioritize bottom-up strategies. Further recommendations include the establishment of a 'Woodstock Local Area Overlay Zone', promote Amin's (1999) concept of 'institutional thickness', and to enable community activities through working alongside urban designers

Organization based multiagent architecture for distributed environments

[EN]Distributed environments represent a complex field in which applied solutions should be flexible and include significant adaptation capabilities. These environments are related to problems where multiple users and devices may interact, and where simple and local solutions could possibly generate good results, but may not be effective with regards to use and interaction. There are many techniques that can be employed to face this kind of problems, from CORBA to multi-agent systems, passing by web-services and SOA, among others. All those methodologies have their advantages and disadvantages that are properly analyzed in this documents, to finally explain the new architecture presented as a solution for distributed environment problems. The new architecture for solving complex solutions in distributed environments presented here is called OBaMADE: Organization Based Multiagent Architecture for Distributed Environments. It is a multiagent architecture based on the organizations of agents paradigm, where the agents in the architecture are structured into organizations to improve their organizational capabilities. The reasoning power of the architecture is based on the Case-Based Reasoning methology, being implemented in a internal organization that uses agents to create services to solve the external request made by the users. The OBaMADE architecture has been successfully applied to two different case studies where its prediction capabilities have been properly checked. Those case studies have showed optimistic results and, being complex systems, have demonstrated the abstraction and generalizations capabilities of the architecture. Nevertheless OBaMADE is intended to be able to solve much other kind of problems in distributed environments scenarios. It should be applied to other varieties of situations and to other knowledge fields to fully develop its potencial.[ES]Los entornos distribuidos representan un campo de conocimiento complejo en el que las soluciones a aplicar deben ser flexibles y deben contar con gran capacidad de adaptación. Este tipo de entornos está normalmente relacionado con problemas donde varios usuarios y dispositivos entran en juego. Para solucionar dichos problemas, pueden utilizarse sistemas locales que, aunque ofrezcan buenos resultados en términos de calidad de los mismos, no son tan efectivos en cuanto a la interacción y posibilidades de uso. Existen múltiples técnicas que pueden ser empleadas para resolver este tipo de problemas, desde CORBA a sistemas multiagente, pasando por servicios web y SOA, entre otros. Todas estas mitologías tienen sus ventajas e inconvenientes, que se analizan en este documento, para explicar, finalmente, la nueva arquitectura presentada como una solución para los problemas generados en entornos distribuidos. La nueva arquitectura aquí se llama OBaMADE, que es el acrónimo del inglés Organization Based Multiagent Architecture for Distributed Environments (Arquitectura Multiagente Basada en Organizaciones para Entornos Distribuidos). Se trata de una arquitectura multiagente basasa en el paradigma de las organizaciones de agente, donde los agentes que forman parte de la arquitectura se estructuran en organizaciones para mejorar sus capacidades organizativas. La capacidad de razonamiento de la arquitectura está basada en la metodología de razonamiento basado en casos, que se ha implementado en una de las organizaciones internas de la arquitectura por medio de agentes que crean servicios que responden a las solicitudes externas de los usuarios. La arquitectura OBaMADE se ha aplicado de forma exitosa a dos casos de estudio diferentes, en los que se han demostrado sus capacidades predictivas. Aplicando OBaMADE a estos casos de estudio se han obtenido resultados esperanzadores y, al ser sistemas complejos, se han demostrado las capacidades tanto de abstracción como de generalización de la arquitectura presentada. Sin embargo, esta arquitectura está diseñada para poder ser aplicada a más tipo de problemas de entornos distribuidos. Debe ser aplicada a más variadas situaciones y a otros campos de conocimiento para desarrollar completamente el potencial de esta arquitectura