Page 46 - Socially Intelligent Agents Creating Relationships with Computers and Robots

Chapter 3

MODELING SOCIAL RELATIONSHIP

An Agent Architecture for Voluntary Mutual Control

Alan H. Bond
California Institute of Technology

Abstract We describe an approach to social action and social relationship among socially
intelligent agents [4], based on mutual planning and mutual control of action.
We describe social behaviors, and the creation and maintenance of social rela-
tionships, obtained with an implementation of a biologically inspired parallel and
modular agent architecture. We define voluntary action and social situatedness,
and we discuss how mutual planning and mutual control of action emerge from
this architecture.

1. The Problem of Modeling Social Relationship

Since, in the future, many people will routinely work with computers for
many hours each day, we would like to understand how working with computers
could become more natural. Since humans are social beings, one approach is
to understand what it might mean for a computer agent and a human to have a
social relationship.
We will investigate this question using a biologically and psychologically
inspired agent architecture that we have developed. We will discuss the more
general problem of agent-agent social relationships, so that the agent architec-
ture is used both as a model of a computer agent and as a model of a human
user.
What might constitute social behavior in a social relationship? Theoretically,
social behavior should include: (i) the ability to act in compliance with a set
of social commitments [1], (ii) the ability to negotiate commitments with a
social group (where we combine, for the purpose of the current discussion, the
different levels of the immediate social group, a particular society, and humanity
as a whole), (iii) the ability to enact social roles within the group, (iv) the ability