CFP:: INTERACTION AND EMERGENT PHENOMENA IN SOCIETIES OF AGENTS (2006 FALL AAAI SYMPOSIUM)

[Gulyas Laszlo]

***Apologies for cross-posting***
***Please distribute to anyone who might be interested***


2006 FALL AAAI SYMPOSIUM
October 12-15, 2006, at the Hyatt Crystal City in Arlington, VA

INTERACTION AND EMERGENT PHENOMENA IN SOCIETIES OF AGENTS
http://pages.towson.edu/gtrajkov/FSS2006

Whereas multi-agent systems have been extremely helpful in solving
engineering problems, much of what we find exciting lies in their
applications to contemporary human life. In particular, the focus of this
meeting will be on self-constituting systems and networks composed of
human and non-human agents characteristic of emergent cyber cultures,
including e-commerce, e-learning as well as other human/non-human agent
systems in medicine, law, science and online interactions of all kinds. It
represents an opportunity not only to share insights and experiments in
multiagent systems composed of robot- and software agents, but also to
theorize about heterogeneity formed at the junction of human- and
non-human agents.

Multi-agent systems, we believe, cross disciplinary boundaries by focusing
on society and culture as emerging from the interactions of autonomous
agents. Poised at the intersection 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
now, but also, through focusing on emergence, how we anticipate the
future.

Moreover, by convening this interdisciplinary symposium, we hope to form a
new network of various researchers and their techniques out of which new
perspectives may arise on old questions in our respective disciplines.
>From here, there are manifold policy implications: multiagent systems
research, we believe, can be a powerful reagent, investigating the
teleological, emergentist assumptions underlying, for example, the
adoption and institutionalization of IT in universities, businesses,
hospitals and NGOs, and suggesting other, networked possibilities.

Key questions:
-Emergence of pre-linguistic concepts
-Emergence of shared representations
-Emergence of meaning and language
-How can we characterize the fungible, shifting networks created by human
and non-human agents?
-How do the environment and the society influence the individual agent and
vice versa?
-What are the knowledges, translations or other hierarchies that emerge in
such settings?
-What tools do we use in these explorations?
-Are emergent phenomena surprising? If so, to whom? And what effects might
such surprise register in a system composed of agents, phenomena and
observer?
-Are they surprises to the agent?
-How do these phenomena reflect on the off and on-line societies?


IMPORTANT DATES

May 1, 2006 	Papers due (10 pages max)
May 22, 2006	Acceptance notice
July/August		Registration opens
August 29, 2006	A/V Requests due, permission to distribute due
Sept 1, 2006	Invited participants registration deadline
Sept 22, 2006	Final (open) registration deadline


ORGANIZING COMMITTEE

Goran Trajkovski (co-chair), Towson University, USA
Samuel Collins (co-chair), Towson University, USA
Georgi Stojanov, American University in Paris, France
Michael North, Argonne National Laboratories, USA
Laszlo Gulyas, AITIA International Inc., Hungary


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










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