Norm emergence in multiagent systems: a viewpoint paper

Abstract

Norms are utilised in agent societies to encourage acceptable behaviour by the participating agents. They can be established or revised from the top-down (authority) or from the bottom-up (populace). The study of norm creation from the bottom-up-or norm emergence/convergence-shows evidence of increasing activity. In consequence, we seek to analyse and categorize the approaches proposed in the literature for facilitating norm emergence. This paper makes three contributions to the study of norm emergence. Firstly, we present the different perspectives of norms and their impact on the norm emergence process, with the aim of comparing their similarities and differences in implementing the norm life cycle. Secondly, we identify the characteristics that support norm emergence that are observed in the emergence literature. Finally, we identify and propose future topics for study for the community, through a discussion of the challenges and opportunities in norm emergence.

Governance of Autonomous Agents on the Web: Challenges and Opportunities

“…Such agents may additionally be able to engage in norm revision processes. Norms, and more broadly conventions or social norms [94], are established in an agent society in one of two ways, namely top-down and bottom-up [101,149].…”

“…The challenges here include modelling and managing the spread of beliefs and counter-beliefs, the potential resolution of contrary positions through argumentation, and how to make hard and soft policies accessible to diferent agent architectures with diferent reasoning capabilities. We diferentiate between a decentralised approach to norm emergence with implicit norms, where the norms emerge through the interactions of agents ś [1] is one example of such a scheme ś and various centralised approaches to the governance of norm emergence [101], which latter we classify by adapting the oversight terminology put forward by the High-Level Expert Group on Artiicial Intelligence (AI HLEG) [74, ğB.II.1.1]: (i) an external agency observes the behaviour of the population to identify patterns of behaviour and revise norms imposed by that agency to optimise for system goals (external agent/human on-the-loop) ś for example Morales et al [100] look at individual norms in isolation ś while the general case of revising a consistent body of norms remains open; (ii) agents propose norm revisions to an external agency, which then implements them subject to an assessment of how those revisions contribute towards system goals (external agent/human in-command), which also remains open; and (iii) agents propose norm revisions and system participants, which may include humans, use an internal decision-making mechanism to establish which changes will be implemented (internal agents/humans in-the-loop). The uHelp system illustrates some preliminary steps in this direction [104], but relegates software agents to a supporting role.…”

Health versus Economic Security: An Ambivalence of Anti-Tobacco Norm Internalisation in Indonesia

“…Norms can be understood as "standard[s] of appropriate behavior of actors with a given identity" ( [22], p. 891); norms therefore prescribe guidance for people's actions. The majority of a given population accepts norms as "either rules of expected behaviour in a society or as behaviour that is common in a society" [4]. The anti-tobacco view can be considered an international norm, as it is generally embraced in most of the world.…”

“…Social norms, on the other hand, are de facto standards developed based on a common belief, custom, or convention. As such, social norms commonly are not written and instead are imposed through verbal communication -they are socially rather than formally sanctioned [4,24]. As a social norm, the anti-tobacco standard appears as a societal convention evident in daily life.…”

“…They spearheaded the birth of anti-tobacco movements in various countries. Through their struggle, the danger of tobacco use to human life has become a global norm imposed by government as well as a "social and moral norm" upheld by society [4]. This norm is the product of these agents' combined efforts in campaigning to raise awareness of the dangers of tobacco use and promoting anti-tobacco perspectives.…”