Open Agent Societies: Normative Specifications in Multi-Agent Systems

by Jeremy Pitt (Editor)

In the near future the Internet will be populated with numerous intelligent agents which will be responsible for carrying out many of the transactions that take place on behalf of the humans that own them. How will we ensure that these agents and their human owners behave in an ethical way? Agents and their owners will need to be accountable to human society's law. Also, internet citizens' rights must be respected and personal information not exploited. This book takes an interdisciplinary approach, drawing on philosophy, law and psychology as well as information technology, to propose approaches to dealing with these issues. Comprehensively addresses the hottest issues concerning agent research - vital for the whole future of e-commerce. Contains chapters from the key players in the Agents community along with contributions from high-profile philosophers, lawyers and psychologists. Includes 4 practical scenarios which show how the theory described in the individual contributions might relate to reality: A financial transaction (trading), a legal transaction, a music application and a games application. Set to become THE official reference for researchers in this field, this should be on the bookshelf of all academic and industrial researchers in EE and CS, involved in intelligent agent research, researchers in Psychology, Philosophy, Law and Cognitive Sciences and graduates studying intelligent agents, internet and artificial societies, virtual communities.

288 pages, Hardcover

Published November 14, 2003