PhD Thesis Proposal
Individual and Collective Ethical Behaviours of
Autonomous Agents within Multi-Agent Systems
Olivier Boisser (Fayol/ENSM-SE)
Grégory Bonnet (GREYC)
Context and motivation
The current development of information and communication technologies propose to human users
the increasing possibility to use artificial agents (robot or software) equipped of autonomous decision
capabilities. These recent developments concern various application domains such as, for instance,
Electronic Commerce and High Frequency Trading, Smart Transport Systems and Autonomous Vehicles, Smart Home and Companion Robots [1].
However, to delegate whole or part of the human decisions to autonomous agents require to take
into account an ethical dimension from a design point of view as well as from an execution point of
view [2, 3]. For instance, answering the question « can we insure that an autonomous trading system
is compliant with the responsible management principles required by some private equity? » or « can
we insure that a data journalism software respects some deontological codes? » can lead to propose
models and computational tools to implement ethical behaviours in agents (design point of view) or
to make the agents able to decide and choose ethical behaviours according to the situation (execution
point of view). In the context of this thesis project, we are considering the second point of view.
Moreover, we examine this question of autonomous agents deciding about ethical behaviours in a
multi-agent context, i.e. a society of artificial and human agents. This collective dimension is one of
the foundation of ethical behaviour and raise multiple challenges such as ethical conflicts [4] between
ethical principles of different agents, of societies of agents, etc.
Objective
The studies developed in this thesis project are mainly considering the interaction between individual
ethical behaviours within societies of autonomous agents. In order to build an agent society, agents
must not only reach agreements on collective ethical principles but also manage conflicts between
different individual ethical principles and with collective ones. For instance, how is it possible to build
collective ethical principles from the individual ethical principles of every agents participating to the
system, without threatening the resources and behaviours of the community? How is it possible for an
individual agent to integrate such collective ethical principles in its own individual decision without
being in conflict with its own individual principles? How can we develop some enforcement strategy in
front of agents that violate the collective ethical principles? These are examples of the questions that
will possible to examine during this project.
In order to answer these questions, the main steps to consider are:
1. To propose a representation of individual ethical principles and then to define individual decision
methods based on these principles. Even if these two problematic are not central to the PhD
thesis, they must be studied in order to propose basis for studying the key issues of the project.
This is why they will mainly be considered in the context of the chosen practical domain.
2. To propose a representation of collective ethical principles and then to instantiate them to the
chosen practical domain.
3. To propose models and methods to combine and manage individual and collective levels in the
context of ethical decision. These models will consist in individual methods to behave ethically
in a collective context and also collective methods to behave ethically based on individual ethical
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behaviours. The different results will be instantiated on the chosen practical domain. A method
to behave ethically is mainly built from mechanisms for (i ) situation assessment, (ii ) other agents
behaviours assesment, (iii ) ethical conflict detection in accordance with the evaluated situation,
ethical principles, evaluated behaviours, (iv ) decision and realization of the chosen behaviour.
4. To experiment, test and evaluate the different mechanisms in various settings where ethical and
non ethical agents will work altogether.
Practical Domain
The choice of the practical domain for testing and experimenting the theoretical models that will be
developed in the thesis, is an important aspect. It will be considered at the beginning of the PhD
thesis in order to instantiate and concretize the studies and questions examined during the thesis. This
is moreover important that ethics is often considered with respect to practical and concrete situations.
In order to feed the thinking, two practical domains are currently envisioned and will be chosen after
discussion with the candidate: high frequency trading, data journalism.
Position description
• Place of work: ENS Mines de Saint-Etienne / Institut Henri Fayol, some stays will have to be
done at GREYC in Caen
• Scientific responsibles: [email protected], [email protected]
• Funding: Contract of three years within ETHICAA Project funded by the French Research
National Agency.
References
[1] E. Aarts and B. de Ruyter. New research perspectives on ambient intelligence. Journal of Ambiant
Intelligence and Smart Environment, 1(1):5–14, 2009.
[2] B.M. McLaren. Computational models of ethical reasoning: challenges, initial steps, and future
directions. IEEE Intelligent Systems, 21(4):29–37, 2006.
[3] J.H. Moor. The nature, importance, and difficulty of machine ethics. IEEE Intelligent Systems,
21(4):18–21, 2006.
[4] R.-W. Robbins and W.-A. Wallace. Decision support for ethical problem solving: A multi-agent
approach. Decision Support Systems, 43(4):1571–1587, 2007.
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