NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #31/NN_1992_31.iso/spool/nlnet/announce/54

Text File | 1992-12-23 | 3.3 KB | 79 lines

Newsgroups: nlnet.announce,vu.general,vucsm.announce
Path: sparky!uunet!mcsun!sun4nl!swi.psy.uva.nl!frankh
From: [e-mail] (Frank van Harmelen)
Subject: A'dams AI Colloquium 15 Jan
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Organization: Social Science Informatics, University of Amsterdam.
Distribution: nlnet
Date: Wed, 23 Dec 1992 09:02:12 GMT
Lines: 68

Amsterdams AI Colloquium
Vrijdag 15 Januari
Zaal S 205,
Faculteit Wiskunde en Informatica,
Vrije Universiteit,
De Boelelaan 1081,
Amsterdam

!!!! Let op de ongebruikelijk dag:
!!!! Deze aflevering van het Amsterdams AI Colloquium
!!!! is op een vrijdag, en niet zoals gebruikelijk op woensdag.


    NORM-GOVERNED AGENT INTERACTION IN LAW AND COMPUTER SCIENCE
                    or
         SHOULD COMPUTER SYSTEMS BE GIVEN RIGHTS?

                 Dr. Marek Sergot
                 Imperial College
                  London

For certain purposes -- and at the appropriate level of abstraction --
law, computer systems, and many other kinds of organisational structure
may be viewed as instances of normative systems. The term refers to any
collection of agents -- some or all of whom may be human, and some or
all of which may be computer systems -- whose behaviour and interactions
can usefully be regarded as governed by norms. Norms prescribe how
agents ought to be behave, how they are permitted to behave, and what
their rights are. Formal techniques developed originally in the analytic
study of legal relations then find application in the characterisation
of normative systems generally -- of which law is but one species.

This talk will expand on these general points, and illustrate how a
specific set of formal tools from the analytic study of law may be
applied to the analysis of some problems arising in the specification of
computer systems -- concretely, the specification of access rights to
sensitive medical information in a mental hospital. The formal tools are
a modified version of the Kanger-Lindahl theory of normative positions.
This is a formal theory which uses deontic logic -- the logic of
obligation and permission -- and the logic of action to cast light on
what legal philosophers have called the 'fundamental legal conceptions'
of duty, right, privilege, and so on, leading to notions of
responsibility and authority.

The final part of the talk will identify some particular issues that
arise in the formal specification of computer systems. Of particular
interest is the potential value of -- explicitly -- adopting the
normative systems perspective on the specification of multi-agent
computer systems. These last remarks will be illustrated by reference to
the central role of 'commitment' in Shoham's Agent Oriented Programming.

The core of this talk is joint work with Andrew J.I. Jones, Department
of Philosophy and NRCCL, University of Oslo.

This talk is aimed at both computer scientists and at Law-and-AI people.

Het Amsterdams AI Colloquium wordt georganiseerd door door de vakgroep
SWI van de UvA, de AI-groep van de VU, en is deze keer in samenwerking
met het Instituut voor Informatica en Recht van de Vrije Universiteit.

Voor meer informatie kunt u contact opnemen met
     Frank van Harmelen ([e-mail], 020-525 6791) of
     Frances Brazier    ([e-mail],      020-548 5588).
--
Frank van Harmelen            [e-mail]
S.W.I.
University of Amsterdam
Roetersstraat 15,