The Requirements Problem in Social Computing
Panel discussion, RESC@RE11,
Trento, August 29, 2011
Fausto giunchiglia
DISI– Dipartimento di Ingegneria e Scienza dell’Informazione
University of Trento
Which “agent” is computing?
Social computing (most often): computer agents in
collaboration with humans (activated by humans)
Social computation(the social computer): human agents in
collaboration with computers
Key differences:
•
Requirements, theory of computation
•
How do you write your criteria of success (specifications)
Social computing
(DARPA Balloon Challenge)
Problem specification: Ten red weather balloons will be launched at a
specified time in different locations across the USA. Design a
computation that finds them all in the shortest time. Prize for the winner
$40,000
Social computations (of the social computer)
Internet scale human problem solving
• 30 million people suffer from
rare diseases in Europe.
• There are 8000 rare
diseases.
• Only 1900 of these are
diagnosable.
• No Member State Health
Service offers diagnostic
services in all 1900
conditions
• Conventional“long tail”
problem
Social Computers beyond Social Computing
Social computation
decentralised through society
Conventional
computation
Compute and data intensiveness of solution
Social control of healthcare and disease
Problems in this space have:
•Small, direct impact locally magnified when
replicated across global society;
or
•Huge, potential impact globally but need a
social infrastructure to harness the local
ingenuity and data of humans/sensors.
Social decentralised systems (social
computing)
Social intensiveness of solution
E-Bay
Facebook
DARPA Network Challenge
RE for the Social Computers
Existing systems can be mapped on a 2-dimensional
space determined by:
 Computational and data Intensiveness: different modes for
capturing, storing, analyzing data and integrating with human
activities, contexts and documents; exploiting results for
provision of services
 Social inclusiveness: different forms of social information
processing (e.g., blogs, wikis, SN platforms etc.) that involve –
to various extents– large amounts of data from large amount
of
What is new?
Research challenges (1)
a. Development of advanced mechanisms to combine
human capabilities, computers and networks into new
forms of human organization and social activity, e.g.
 network protocols including social rules, incentives;
 customizable computer programs
b. Integration of social sciences/humanities and ICT – the
former will determine the design of Social Computers and
the Internet, the latter will implement it
c. Development of new science, engineering and
infrastructures that will provide unprecedented data to
social sciences
Research challenges (2)
7 main scientific interdisciplinary challenges arise and should
be met:
1. Enabling human- social computer symbiosis
2. Enabling computational societies
3. Managing human, social and technological diversity and
its impacts on social computation
4. Managing the evolution in time of humanns, society and
technology and their impact on social computation
5. Guaranteeing privacy and security of individuals
6. Development of a science of the New Internet
7. Engineering the infrastructure to evaluate and test Social
Computer applications
Where do we start?
Case study driven
Need real world experimentation
I have started with “Science as social computation”
Current exercise: IJCAI “computational” community
The Social Computer
Internet-Scale Human Problem Solving
Thank you!