Designing Creativity

Is it possible to design for creativity? This is one of the most important research questions in AI and Design. This paper raises the question whether automated software agent design can be creative. Not only is the artefact dynamic in the sense that it adapts to its environment, it is also autonomous: an agent decides on its own when to be modified and by whom. An agent's functionality may evolve beyond the expectations of its designers and/or users resulting in very new, unique artefacts. Is this type of design creative? Is the process creative? The result? 1

Re-design of compositional systems

Treur, J. [Promotor]Brazier, F.M.T. [Copromotor

Designing Self-Modifying Agents

Agents need to be able to adapt to changes in their environment. One way to achieve this, is to provide agents with the ability of self-modification. Self-modification requires reflection and strategies with which new knowledge can be acquired, a necessary condition for creativity. This paper describes a knowledge-level model for the design of self-modifying agents and explores the feasibility of automatically designing self-modifying agents

Automated Servicing of Agents

Agents need to be able to adapt to changes in their environment. One way to achieve this, is to service agents when needed. A separate servicing facility, a multi-agent factory, is capable of automatically modifying agents. This paper discusses th

The Role of Trust in Distributed Design

Automated support of design teams, consisting of both human and automated systems, requires an understanding of the role of trust in distributed design processes. By explicating trust, an individual designer's decisions become better understood and may be better supported. Each individual designer has his or her private goals in a cooperative design setting, in which requirement conflicts and resource competitions abound. However, there are group goals that also need to be reached. This paper presents an overview of research related to trust in the context of agents and design, a computational knowledge-level model of trust based on the seven beliefs distinguished by Castelfranchi and Falcone, and an example of the use of the trust model in a specific design process, namely, Website design from the perspective of a single designer. The results are discussed in the context of distributed design in open systems. Copyright © 2004 Cambridge University Press

The acquisition of a shared task model

The process of the acquisition of an agreed, shared task model as a means to structure interaction between expert users and knowledge engineers is described. The role existing (generic) task models play in this process is illustrated for two domains of application, both domains requiring diagnostic reasoning. In both domains different levels of interaction between an expert user and a diagnostic reasoning system are distinguished.

Strategies for integrating multiple viewpoints and levels of detail

Automated design requires explicit representation of strategic knowledge. This paper focuses on strategic knowledge needed to reason with and about viewpoints during the design of a software agent. Reasoning with and about viewpoints entails not only deciding which viewpoint to consider when and in which context, but also at which level of detail. In this paper an information retrieval agent is used to illustrate how these types of knowledge can be used to design software agents

An Agent Architecture for Dynamic Re-design of Agents

. This paper presents a generic architecture for an agent capable of designing and creating new agents. The design agent itself is based on an existing generic agent model, and includes a refinement of a generic model for design, in which strategic reasoning and dynamic management of requirements are explicitly modelled. This model is refined for the design of agents, or (parts of) multi-agent systems. It includes an explicit formal representation at a logical level of (1) requirements that can be formulated for agents and multi-agent systems, and (2) design object descriptions of a (part of a) multi-agent system. The generic architecture has been formally specified in DESIRE, and has been tested in a prototype application. 1 1 Introduction Agents that are able to dynamically design and create new agents, or to dynamically modify existing agents can be very useful. For example, Internet agents that are capable of dynamically creating new agents to assist them in information gatheri..