Using Socially Deliberating Agents in Organized Settings

Recently there is an increased interest in social agency and in designing and building organizations of agents. In this paper we view an organization as an interrelated set of groups. Each group has an explicit structure in terms of positions and their interrelations. Agents in groups deliberate socially, distinguishing between their individual and group attitudes: Each agent is able to agree on and accept certain attitudes as attitudes of the groups it belongs. Acting as group members, agents must be able to act on the basis of these group mental attitudes rather than on the basis of their individual beliefs. This issue, although ultimately important, it has not given much attention in agent community. The objective of this paper is (a) to propose a generic design pattern for building agent organizations in which the constituting groups build and maintain their own group goals and beliefs according to their needs and the environmental conditions, (b) to present the functionality of social deliberating agents that act as group members in organized settings, and (c) to report on the development of a prototype system that comprises agents that implement such a kind of social deliberation.