2007 FALL AAAI SYMPOSIUM
EMERGENT AGENTS AND SOCIALITIES:
SOCIAL AND ORGANIZATIONAL ASPECTS OF INTELLIGENCE

Washington, DC * November 8–11, 2007

http://pages.towson.edu/gtrajkov/FSS07
http://www.aaai.org/Symposia/Fall/fss07.php

The study of agency and multiagent systems crosses disciplinary boundaries by focusing on society, culture and communication as emerging from interactions of autonomous agents. Poised at the intersections of AI, cybernetics, sociology, semiotics and anthropology, this strand of multiagent systems research enables a powerful perspective illuminating not only how we live and learn, but also, through focusing on emergence, how we anticipate the future.

This symposium focuses on second order emergence. The constituents in a system are aware of an emergent phenomenon and adapt accordingly. New agents emerge as human and nonhuman agents interact, hinting at new qualities that may enable us to push the use of technology to its maximum capacity, and in the process imbricating both the observer and the observed in successive cycles of emergence.

In most studies to date, the non-human agent is subordinate to the human agents. Without the human input (and in the absence of another obstacle), the non-human agent goes nowhere. On the other hand, if we look at these interactions as emergent socialities, the non-human agent has a pivotal role–that of amanuensis for all subsequent social interaction. That is, without the non-human agent, there can be no emergent social interaction to begin with.

Theories of emergence suggest a dynamic, multi-directionality of perception organized socially as multi-agent systems. What is less studied is the messiness of those multi-agent systems themselves, the way they involve complex “translations“ between human and non-human agents, or “transcodings” between different representational and discursive modalities.

The symposium proposes to delve into the messiness of the social, approaching it from multiple perspectives simultaneously—computational, sociological, linguistic and cybernetic—in such a way as to stimulate our own sites of emergence at the borders of these disciplines.

Focal areas:
Concepts, definitions and theories
Cognitive aspects of emergence in interactions
Tools and methods for studying emergent phenomena
Simulations and experiments in agency, interaction, and emergence
Emergent of society, and societal phenomena
Organization and societies, interaction and communication

ORGANIZING COMMITTEE

Goran Trajkovski (co-chair), Towson University, USA
Samuel Collins (co-chair), Towson University, USA

Laslo Gulyas, AITIA International Inc., Hungary
Michael North, Argonne National Laboratories, USA
Keith Sawyer, Washington University in St Louis, MO, USA
Richard Schilling, Cognition Group Inc, USA
Georgi Stojanov, American University in Paris, France

Please submit all questions to Goran Trajkovski, gtrajkovski@towson.edu (http://pages.towson.edu/gtrajkov)

Submission details
Those interested in participating in this symposium should send either a full paper (8 pages maximum) or a position paper (1-2 pages) in AAAI format in PDF to interaction.emergence@gmail.com.

The abstracts are due by May 1, 2007. Acceptance/rejection notices will be mailed on or about May 21, 2007. Full versions of papers will be expected by July 1st, 2007, and, if accepted, the camera-ready version of the paper will be due by September 1, 2007.

Limited financial support is available for students-participants of this symposium.