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Accountability in multi-agent organizations: from conceptual design to agent programming

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Abstract

This work proposes a notion of accountability for multi-agent systems, that supports the development of robust distributed systems. Accountability is grounded on responsibility, and encompasses both a normative dimension, and a structural dimension. For realizing robust distributed systems, conceived as agent systems or organizations, it is necessary to keep a right level of situational awareness, through the introduction of the means for gathering and propagating accounts, upon which actions can be taken. This paper presents a formalization of accountability, including the accountability lifecycle, for the design of robust agent organizations. Particular attention is given to the interplay of accountability and goals, by describing typical patterns in which accountability affects the state of an agent’s goals and vice versa. We illustrate the practical aspects of the proposal by means of JaCaMo (Boissier et al. Sci Comput Program 78(6):747–761, 2013. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scico.2011.10.004).

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Notes

  1. Available at http://di.unito.it/moiseaccountability.

  2. delay(G) is a keyword encoding an organizational event of unfulfillment of an obligation concerning goal G, issued towards some responsible agent. We use it as a shortcut for the formula scheme_id(S) & unfulfilled(obligation(_,_,done(S,G,_),_)).

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  1. Dipartimento di Informatica, Università degli Studi di Torino, Corso Svizzera 185, 10149, Torino, Italy

    Matteo Baldoni, Cristina Baroglio, Roberto Micalizio & Stefano Tedeschi

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Baldoni, M., Baroglio, C., Micalizio, R. et al. Accountability in multi-agent organizations: from conceptual design to agent programming. Auton Agent Multi-Agent Syst 37, 7 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10458-022-09590-6

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