Ethics in Sociotechnical Systems

Ethics is inherently a multiagent concern. However, research on AI ethics today is dominated by work on individual agents: (1) how an autonomous robot or car may harm or (differentially) benefit people in hypothetical situations (the so-called trolley problems) and (2) how a machine learning algorithm may produce biased decisions or recommendations. The societal framework is largely omitted.

To develop new foundations for ethics in AI, we adopt a sociotechnical stance in which agents (as technical entities) help autonomous social entities or principals (people and organizations). This multiagent conception of a sociotechnical system (STS) captures how ethical concerns arise in the mutual interactions of multiple stakeholders. These foundations would enable us to realize ethical STSs that incorporate social and technical controls to respect stated ethical postures of the agents in the STSs. The envisioned foundations require new thinking, along two broad themes, on how to realize (1) an STS that reflects its stakeholders’ values and (2) individual agents that function effectively in such an STS.


New Foundations of Ethical Multiagent Systems

An interaction protocol specifies a decentralized multiagent system operationally by specifying constraints on messages exchanged by its member agents.  Engineering with protocols requires support for a notion of refinement, whereby a protocol may be substituted without loss of correctness by one that refines it.  We identify two desiderata for refinement. One, generality: refinement should not restrict enactments by limiting protocols or infrastructures under consideration.  Two, preservation: to facilitate modular verification, refinement should preserve liveness and safety.

  We contribute a novel formal notion of protocol refinement based on enactments. We demonstrate generality by tackling the declarative framework of information protocols.  We demonstrate preservation by formally establishing that our notion of refinement is safety and liveness preserving. We show the practical benefits of refinement by implementing a checker. We demonstrate that it is less time-intensive to check refinement (and thereby gain safety and liveness) than to recheck safety and liveness of a composition.


Refinement for Multiagent Protocols

ELESSAR: Ethics in Norm-Aware Agents

[![](https://assets.underline.io/uploads/markdown_image/1/image/f30fd5693c8c6679c5c1a4ca33305ccb.png)](https://sites.google.com/view/ai-ethics/) 

**Tutorial presenters:**  Nirav Ajmeri, Pradeep K. Murukannaiah and Munindar P. Singh

Tutorial: Ethics in Sociotechnical Systems

tutorial

AAMAS is the largest and most influential conference in the area of agents and multiagent systems, bringing together researchers and practitioners in all areas of agent technology and providing and internationally renowned high-profile forum for publishing and finding out about the latest developments in the field. AAMAS is the flagship conference of the non-profit International Foundation for Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems (IFAAMAS).  

AAMAS 2021 Workshops & Tutorials

Blue Sky

technical paper

AAMAS is the leading scientific conference for research in autonomous agents and multi-agent systems. The AAMAS conference series was initiated in 2002 as the merging of three respected scientific meetings: the International Conference on Multi-Agent Systems (ICMAS), the International Workshop on Agent Theories, Architectures, and Languages (ATAL), and the International Conference on Autonomous Agents (AA). The aim of the joint conference is to provide a single, high-profile, internationally-respected archival forum for scientific research in the theory and practice of autonomous agents and multi-agent systems.

Browse keynotes, discussions, panels and over 300 presentations.


AAMAS 2020

AAMAS is the leading scientific conference for research in autonomous agents and multi-agent systems. The AAMAS conference series was initiated in 2002 as the merging of three respected scientific meetings: the International Conference on Multi-Agent Systems (ICMAS), the International Workshop on Agent Theories, Architectures, and Languages (ATAL), and the International Conference on Autonomous Agents (AA). 

Munindar P. Singh

5

9

SHORT BIO

Presentations

Ethics in Sociotechnical Systems

New Foundations of Ethical Multiagent Systems

Refinement for Multiagent Protocols

ELESSAR: Ethics in Norm-Aware Agents

Ethics in Sociotechnical Systems

Stay up to date with the latest Underline news!

PRESENTATIONS

CONFERENCES

COMPANY

RESOURCES