AgentPrIMe: adapting MAS designs to build confidence

  • Authors:

  • Simon Miles;Paul Groth;Steve Munroe;Michael Luck;Luc Moreau

  • Affiliations:

  • Department of Computer Science, King's College London, UK;School of Electronics and Computer Science, University of Southampton, UK;School of Electronics and Computer Science, University of Southampton, UK;Department of Computer Science, King's College London, UK;School of Electronics and Computer Science, University of Southampton, UK

  • Venue:
  • AOSE'07 Proceedings of the 8th international conference on Agent-oriented software engineering VIII
  • Year:
  • 2007

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Abstract

The products of systems cannot always be judged at facevalue: the process by which they were obtained is also important. Forinstance, the rigour of a scientific experiment, the ethics with which anitem was manufactured and the use of services with particular licensingall affect how the results of those processes are valued. However,in systems of autonomous agents, and particularly those with multipleindependent contributory organisations, the ability of agents to choosehow their goals or responsibilities are achieved can hide such processqualities from users. The issue of ensuring that users are able to checkthese process qualities is a software engineering one: the developer mustdecide to ensure that adequate data is recorded regarding processes andsafeguards implemented to ensure accuracy. In this paper, we describeAgentPrIMe, an adjunct to existing agent-oriented methodologies thatallows system designs to be adapted to give users confidence in the resultsthey produce. It does this by adaptations to the design for documentation,corroboration, independent storage and accountability.