AGENTS
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Seely-Brown, John.(2000) Agents and Angels
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Vision: agents will be the nervous tissue of a
world brain.
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Powerpoint template: Communicating bad news
7/1/2016
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Our Situation
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State the bad news:
Gates says Bots will develop personality.
Bots will drive our cars & monitor behavior.
Bots don’t negotiate. They tear the social fabric,
& destabilize markets in pursuit of immediate
goals.
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Be clear, don’t try to obscure the situation:
You are wetwear. (Seely-Brown).
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How Did This Happen?
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Product Brokering Bots:
American Airlines SAABRE
& Amazon endorsements.
Functional autonomy <-- Law of least effort &
opacity of decisions.
Taken to the Dark Side by:
Standardization
Profit maximization (Holloway, 1997, Pattie)
 AND THESE WERE THE “GOOD” BOTS!
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More - How Did This Happen?
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These were INTERFACE agents, rather than
AUTONOMOUS agents (Lieberman, 1997),
Petrie, 1996).
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Now, all Bots are AUTONOMOUS
INTERFACE agents, in some sense. E.g.,
Letizia, Webwatcher, Lira, The Remembrance
Agent (see BotSpot). All can be corrupted.

More important: “good” v “malicious” Bots.
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More-How Did This Happen?
Anonymous remailers:
Misleading messages
Spam
Identity theft
Cancelbots erasing messages
 Commercial competition


A HUMAN problem: Seely-Brown, Lieberman,
but -- Bots raise the stakes dramatically.
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Alternatives Considered
Further questionable development:
“Learning” bots (e.g., negotiating bots).
“Goal & rule shifting” bots (weighing factors).
 Bot interaction --> unpredictable results:
Billions of Bots (IBM, site removed).


Further improvement:
Responsibility/liability shifted to users (Maes).
Transparent decisions.
Encryption (a never-ending game).
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Recommendation or Decision
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Don’t worry. It CAN’T happen. –
at least, not for a LONG time –
by which time we will have safeguards –
and programmers will become moral –
unless the Bots learn to program themselves –
Uh, where’s that power plug?

Worry. Invoke the safeguards.
Norman (2002) How Might People Interact
with Agents?
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Our Vision for the Future
Bots will proliferate: sensing, storing,
transmitting, weighing, and acting.
 When the number of Bots reaches critical
mass, the “World Brain” will develop self
awareness.
 We may be prepared for this,
 But probably not.

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Summary
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Key points to remember that will give audience
confidence or improve morale:
Humans are working on this, busily making
Bots to control Bots.
Bots are working on this, busily making Bots to
control Humans.
We haven’t lost such a race, yet.
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