<!DOCTYPE article PUBLIC "-//NLM//DTD JATS (Z39.96) Journal Archiving and Interchange DTD v1.0 20120330//EN" "JATS-archivearticle1.dtd">
<article xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">
  <front>
    <journal-meta />
    <article-meta>
      <title-group>
        <article-title>Crowd-Based Socio-Cognitive Systems</article-title>
      </title-group>
      <contrib-group>
        <contrib contrib-type="author">
          <string-name>Pablo Noriega</string-name>
          <email>pablo@iiia.csic.es</email>
          <xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">1</xref>
        </contrib>
        <contrib contrib-type="author">
          <string-name>Mark d'Inverno</string-name>
          <xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff0">0</xref>
        </contrib>
        <aff id="aff0">
          <label>0</label>
          <institution>Goldsmiths College</institution>
          ,
          <addr-line>London</addr-line>
          ,
          <country country="UK">UK</country>
        </aff>
        <aff id="aff1">
          <label>1</label>
          <institution>IIIA-CSIC</institution>
          ,
          <addr-line>Barcelona</addr-line>
          ,
          <country country="ES">Spain</country>
        </aff>
      </contrib-group>
      <abstract>
        <p>In recent years there have been several successful examples of crowdbases systems, used for very different purposes and built on a variety of technological artefacts, some ad-hoc, some generic. We presume it is possible to give a precise characterisation of what we call crowd-based sociocognitive systemsand postulate that it is possible to formulate a framework to model and implement actual crowd-based sociocognitive systemsin a principled way. In this paper we outline the research program, propose the main features of a metamodel for modelling crowd-based sociocognitive systemsand make a call to arms for future development and collaboration.3</p>
      </abstract>
    </article-meta>
  </front>
  <body>
    <sec id="sec-1">
      <title>Introduction</title>
      <p>Despite the explosion of crowd-based systems and our increasing desire to engage in
social activity online, there has been surprisingly little interest from the multi-agent
community to use their methods to provide an analysis of such systems. This is
surprising, as at the heart of these systems is the notion of coordination, cooperation,
emergence, regulation, trust and reputation. This is especially true when we consider that
such systems must be modelled from a socio-cognitive perspective where individual
agents (human or computational) not only behave with some degree of rationality but
where that rationality is based on the model that agents have of the other agents in the
system. In this paper we will refer to such systems as Crowd-Based Socio-Cognitive
Systems (or CBSCS) which at their most fundamental level have large numbers of
rational agents, each with the ability to model the other agents in the system, and that
interact in order to achieve shared or individual goals.</p>
      <p>Thinking about the nature of crowd-based socio-cognitive systems in this was might
lead readers from a multi-agent system (MAS) background to consider them as
wonderful ideal testbeds, with huge amounts of data, to see whether our theories of regulated
3 This paper reflects ideas from conversations with Harko Verhagen and Julian Padget. Both of
them and Mark d’Inverno received support from the European Network for Social Intelligence,
SINTELNET (FET Open Coordinated Action FP7-ICT-2009-C Project No. 286370) for short
term visits to the IIIA. Work supported by projects PRAISE, ACE, COR, AT and by
Generalitat of Catalunya grant 2009-SGR-1434. Some of the work was undertaken as part of the
FP7 project in the Technology-Enhanced Learning Program called Practice and Performance
Analysis Inspiring Social Education (PRAISE). The Principal Investigator for the project at
Goldsmiths is Mark d’Inverno and the partners also include IIIA-CSIC, Barcelona
behaviour can be used to describe how people operate in the virtual worlds of
crowdbased systems. It is our belief that there is a wonderful opportunity for our research
community to make a concerted effort to try to understand these systems from an MAS
perspective. Not only to test out own models and theories with lots of real examples of
regulated multi-agent systems but to provide proper tools for the analysis of such
systems that can provide us with the proper language for engaging with the huge body of
work from sociologists, psychologists, anthropologists and cultural theorists
investigating human behaviour in such systems. This paper is a first foray into trying to engage the
MAS community in the specification, design, analysis and engineering of such systems
as we believe that the community has much to offer.</p>
      <p>Not only is there an opportunity to understand the social activity that happens online
but also an opportunity to build a language to relate the virtual worlds of crowd-based
systems to the real emotional and physical worlds we inhabit with our systems. We need
tools and analysis techniques for exploring this relationship, for a technical language for
describing and understanding the meaning and ramifications of various kinds of online
social activity into the real world, and even to start map out the space to see if there are
new kinds of opportunity for building new kinds of online systems supporting new kinds
of social activity. Not surprisingly many systems are driven by technological possibility
and financial gain rather than social good. If we, as researchers in this area, can provide
a conceptual framework to map out what is happening within these systems from a
multi-agent perspective might there be an opportunity to take part (as just one example)
in the discussions about the social responsibility of such systems.</p>
      <p>The current situation appears to us that we have no clear technical grounding to
adequately describing such systems from an MAS socio-cognitive perspective. We do
not have the models, language, theory or tools for the description, analysis and creation
of such systems. In order to try to form a bridge between the work in MAS and regulated
systems and the plethora of emerging systems this paper sets out to define a conceptual
framework for such systems using the language of agents, norms and communication in
order to do so. By doing so we hope to seed an emerging research area concerned with
developing theories, tools, languages and methodologies for designing such systems. If
we can demonstrate the applicability and usefulness of our modelling techniques then
we may potentially provide a bridge to other subject areas, such as sociology, in order
to have a more rounded understanding of the social and psychological responsibility
that should be considered in the design of such systems.
1.1</p>
      <sec id="sec-1-1">
        <title>Socio-Cognitive Systems</title>
        <p>Socio-Cognitive Systems (SCS) are characterised across the following characteristics.
The reader should consider this to be an indicative list of the qualities of the class of
SCS rather than an exhaustive one.</p>
        <p>– Dimension 1. The system contains agents. Agents are either computational or
human and can exhibit purposeful behaviour.
– Dimension 2. The population with a system may be a mix of human and software
agents.
– Dimension 3.. The agents have a model of the world in which they operate.
– Dimension 4. The agents within the system are rational in that they are capable of
choosing different courses of action based on their own models (however simple or
complex these may be).
– Dimension 5. The agents are social in that they interact with other agents.
– Dimension 6. The agents are have social models (either complex or simple) of some
of the other agents in the system,
– Dimension 7. At least some of the agents are socio-cognitive in the sense that they
based their decisions on some decision-making process which takes into account
the models of the social world in which they are situated. This includes the
capability to plan for future desire states in the environment whilst taking into account
the motivations and models of other agents. Such agents can reason about who to
collaborate with other agents to achieve individual and joint goals.
– Dimension 8. The agents have social capabilities including potentially awareness
and models of others, an ability to understand the norms of a system and adopt
attitudes relating to norm-compliance and the ability to have altruistic goals
– Dimension 9. Any such system is defined by the system of interacting agents which
means that the state of the system can never been known in full as there is no general
access to the internal state of agents. This is often referred to as opacity..
– Dimension 10. Agents may enter and leave an SCS at any time. It cannot be known
either by the designer of the system or by other agents which agents may join or
leave. Agents may often be able to join or leave without it being known to other
agents.
– Dimension 11. Such systems as regulated either intrinsically because of the way
the system is designed, the way that some agents have been specified to operate
or naturally through the agreement of agents within the system. The point about
regulated systems is that not all actions are available to all agents at all times which
enables more effective social coordination to be facilitated.
– Dimension 12. Agents are autonomous and so march to the beat of their own drum
and so are not necessarily socially-considerate, benevolent, or honest and so may
fail to act as expected or desired or promised.
– Dimension 13. All interactions are mediated by technological artefacts and may
therefore be wrapped as communicative acts or messages. Systems that have this
property are referred to as dialogical.</p>
        <p>
          This list includes the characteristics of systems that have been investigated by the
research community looking at regulated multi-agent systems and attempts to reflect
the recent discussion on Socio-Cognitive Technical Systems that is arising from the
Sintelnet project (see Positon Papers in www.sintelnet.eu/wiki/index.php/Sourcebook
and in particular[
          <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref1 ref2">2, 1</xref>
          ])
1.2
        </p>
      </sec>
      <sec id="sec-1-2">
        <title>Towards a description of Crowd-based Socio-Cognitive Systems</title>
        <p>According to the work of Surowiecki [9] crowd-based systems are concerned with
connecting or collecting diverse collections of independently deciding individuals. The
basic thesis is that diverse collections of independent autonomous agents with different
models, perceptions, motivations and rationality can often analyse or predict scenarios
or data more effectively than individuals even when those individuals are specialists in
their area of expertise.</p>
        <p>He discusses three types of system advantages
1. Cognition. This is about how crowds can make judgements through thinking and
information processing faster than individual experts
2. Coordination. This is whether social or physical coordination can emerge naturally
in large communities of agents. It relates to how a shared view of the reactions of a
community provide often accurate judgements about how the community will react
to events.
3. Cooperation. Again this relates to the emergence of ways in which trust and
reputation can emerge naturally without needing a top-down set of norms for social
cooperation and co-ordination of activity.</p>
        <p>There are then four criteria to distinguish wise crowds from unwise crowds that we
summarise using our own MAS terminology as follows.
1. Diversity of opinion. Each agent has its own private information that cannot be
known by others.
2. Independence. Agents’ opinions are not completely determined by the opinions of
those around them, agents also have a degree of autonomy in the way they form
their opinions.
3. Decentralization. Agents have different local knowledge and different perceptions
of their local environment.
4. Aggregation. Some mechanism exists for turning private judgments into a collective
decision.</p>
        <p>So the question becomes what further characteristics do we need to add to our
descriptions of Socio-Cognitive Systems. In the four criteria above we already have items
1, 2 and 3 from our own definition. So we add two more</p>
        <p>Crowd-based Socio-Cognitive Systems are Socio-Cognitive Systems which have
the following three sometimes rather nebulous characteristics.</p>
        <p>– Dimension 14. There is a significant population of agents.
– Dimension 15. The system allows for norms (for social cooperation and
coordination), trust and reputation to arise natural.
– Dimension 16. The system provides mechanism for turning individual analysis,
goals or work into collective analysis, goals and work.</p>
        <p>Crowd-based Socio-Cognitive Systems are thus systems that exhibit some features
of what is accepted as crowdsourcing or crowd-based behaviour systems but have the
distinguishing characteristic that individuals need to reason about themselves and their
social environment, because their behaviour is affected by that social environment and
also because with their behaviour they may influence the social environment to some
extent. A system which implements all of these characteristics also appears in this
conference [12].
1.3</p>
      </sec>
      <sec id="sec-1-3">
        <title>Motivation of our work</title>
        <p>Such systems are a new phenomenon that involves thousands and sometimes millions
of people. What is striking, and perhaps a little unnerving too, is that most such systems
are being developed without any theoretical underpinning and in such a way that it is
often not easy to see what is underneath the bonnet. Of course there are many kinds of
definitions and descriptions but they are not necessarily conducive to a principled
analysis or design of CBSCS. Our motivation is to want to understand them in principled
ways and describe them in a systematic and formal way that can then be used for the
design and implementation of such systems based on principles developed from work
in regulated MAS. Our overall ambition is to be part of the design systems of these
systems where we can more clearly articulate the social benefit for those participating
within it Our wide-ranging goals to support this ambitions can be described as at least
containing the following enumerated below.
1. How can the MAS community take part in the design of CBSCS?
2. What could we offer to the design of such systems in general?
3. How should we present our work in such a way that any system of designers would
ever care to notice it?
4. Could we imagine collaborative research projects with designers where research
could be developed through the process of design about the nature of designing
such systems and understanding how MAS techniques could be applied?
5. In this light, does it make sense to define the universe of SCS (in terms of normative
systems and institutions?)
6. If this is not possible (look at the thousands of agent definitions that derailed many
scientific and investigations because of lack of a common conceptual and
definitional framework from which proper scientific enquiry and engineering systems
integration could take place) would it be possible to identify and define the key
concepts of CBSCS systems that is useful, engaging and relevant?
7. How might we turn this round and highlight to the MAS community the potential
of CBSCS systems for investigating social systems from an MAS perspective?
8. What is a good way to map out the key research issues for a regulated MAS
approach to analysing CBSCS systems?
9. Could we identify the potential influence into the design of CBSCS systems for
new kinds of collective activity for communities such as ours?</p>
        <p>We believe that with a combined effort we can produce answers to these questions
trough models., metamodels, tools, design methodologies for interaction and interfaces
that would underpin the principled design, specification and analysis of such systems.
The way to do this, we believe, is to undertake an empirical study of such systems, and
attempt their characterisation using our conceptual framework (models, data structures
and languages).</p>
        <p>We want to consider the social needs of users and the kinds of actions users want,
to coordinate within communities and use this as part of the design of new systems. If
we can develop clear, useful and principled models of such systems that can be used by
designers and communities then the emphasis can be much more focussed on the end
use than the specific goals of the engineer who builds it.</p>
        <p>Not only do we want principled design and tools and interfaces that make it easy to
build these things, but also so that potential communities can understand the range of
options that are available to them. So there is a political element here to develop models
and design methodologies that can put the user and the community in control of the
system they want to be a part of, rather than be part of a system that has been developed
by sets of engineers from multi-national companies with less clear motives.</p>
        <p>At heart is the question of not wanting to be left out of the design and investigation
of crowd-based systems when the MAS community has put such effort into
understanding them. Indeed many of us joined the research effort into understanding what social
action is from a multi-agent system perspective because we wanted to understand and
support cooperation and coordination. How could we coordinate the activities of agents
with different personal goals coming together for a common need? Political and social
activism, environmentalism, local community, learning, fun and games—we want to be
able to build such systems to support a whole range of coordinated social activity as
well as investigate the potential range of social activity that can be supported by such
systems. If now is not the time that the work we, the MAS community, have
developed over the last 20 years or so in understanding social systems from a computational
perspective then, when will it ever be?
2</p>
      </sec>
    </sec>
    <sec id="sec-2">
      <title>Background</title>
      <p>The research programme we envision is to achieve an understanding of socio-cognitive
systems, in general, so that we may eventually be able to design new systems with a
principled approach. We propose to address the general problem, first by delimiting
the universe to an explicit set of features that may allow us to decide whether a given
system–existing or being designed—belongs to that universe, and second, developing
an abstract understanding of what is common to these systems by separating two
fundamental objects of concern: the actual agents (be they human or artificial) and the social
space where these agents interact.</p>
      <p>On modelling agents, we will assume that these agents may need to reason not only
about themselves but also about that social space, because the social space influences
and determines in some sense their actions, and also because agents do influence the
social space. Thus agents would have to exhibit capabilities or cognitive dispositions
to be aware of other agents, to interpret what is the state of the world, and to hold
expectations of what possibilities of action are available (for itself or for other agents)
and what the consequences of those actions may be. Likewise, the modelling of the
social space determines what inputs and outputs will be accessible to the agents, and
therefore one has to device the means to model what the social space “affords” agents to
act upon and to be aware of, and the means by which the space may influence the activity
of agents. In other words, what objects exist in that space, how agents communicate,
how can activities may be coordinated, what types of organisations can an agent belong
to, and so on. 4 Consequently, in abstract terms, we shall speak of meta-models of
socio-cognitive agents and metamodels of social spaces. For each of these metamodels</p>
      <sec id="sec-2-1">
        <title>4 We use the notion of affordance in the spirit of Norman [8].</title>
        <p>we would then attempt to produce precise, even formal, descriptions that would allow
the specification (and formal analysis) of actual models of agents and of social spaces.
Metamodels that in turn need to be accompanied by technological artefacts that enable
the actual implementation of socio-cognitive systems where artificial or natural agents
pullulate in an artificial social space.</p>
        <p>We realise that attempting to find a single metamodel for agents and for social
spaces is at best impractical. However we glimpse the possibility of sketching some
generic metamodels for families of socio-cognitive systems (SCS). For example, on-line
marketplaces, massive on-line role playing games, mixed-level simulation, or
policymaking support systems. We postulate that one of these families are crowd-based SCS.</p>
        <p>Consequently, we may rephrase the next steps in our research programme, in terms
of CBSCS, in the following four steps:</p>
      </sec>
      <sec id="sec-2-2">
        <title>1. Compile a corpus of CBSCS</title>
        <p>2. Understand what is ”structural” of crowd-based SCS.
3. Map the universe from these exemplars
4. Outline a conceptual framework, identify adequate tools and methodological
guidelines
2.1</p>
        <sec id="sec-2-2-1">
          <title>Our bias</title>
          <p>
            In two previous papers [
            <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref7">10, 7</xref>
            ] we discussed the basic tenants of our research
programme: (i) a three-fold view of socio-cognitive systems, the notion of shared
context and the relationships among the three views, its abstract (platform-independent)
model, and the implementable (platform-specific) model. (ii) The relationship between
metamodel, environment, computational architecture and platform. (iii) The separation
between agents and social space and between design environment and enactment
environment of the socio-cognitive systems.
          </p>
          <p>
            We are confident that the approach we propose has some hope to succeed because
we already have done a similar task for the abstract notion of “electronic institutions”
([
            <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref3">3</xref>
            ]). In this case, the universe of systems it may model and implement is close to the
very general notion of socio-cognitive systems that we have as the ultimate goal of our
research programme.
          </p>
          <p>
            After a decade of development of the conceptual framework, associated tools and
a considerable number of application cases, we were able to produce a formal
metamodel, and the associated technological artefacts integrated in a working development
platform [
            <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref3">3</xref>
            ]. The electronic institution framework is actually only applicable to the
social interaction space, since one of its key assumptions is that participating agents are
black boxes who are able and willing to comply with the space conventions, thus there
is no commitment to any agent model. Thus, the space itself is a regulated multiagent
system where agents interact through speech acts that are organised as interrelated
conversations (or “scenes”) where the illocutionary exchange is prescribed with regimented
procedural rules.
          </p>
          <p>Figure 1 summarises the actual metamodel. Briefly speaking, it includes two parts:
the “dialogical framework” that provide participants those elements that are involved in
action (these are “dialogical” because interactions are understood as conversations); and</p>
          <p>EG
E AU
G G
AU AN
ILTNOG LADNOM
AN I</p>
          <p>AC
E IN
G U
A M
U M
NG CO
LTTAASNRNO</p>
          <p>I
E C
LTAAANCNUOGG
I</p>
          <p>ELECTRONIC INSTITUTION
LANGUAGES</p>
          <p>SOCIAL MODEL
DIALOGICAL FRAMEWORK</p>
          <p>INFORMATION</p>
          <p>MODEL
the regulations that govern those actions. It is beyond the scope of this paper to explain
these components in detail but we shall make some quick remarks on the affordances
of this metamodel, in order to give a flavour of what needs to be made explicit and
properly formalised in order to provide ad-hoc metamodels for crowd-based SCS:</p>
        </sec>
      </sec>
    </sec>
    <sec id="sec-3">
      <title>Towards a framework for crowd-based SCS</title>
      <sec id="sec-3-1">
        <title>Outlook</title>
        <p>We aim to define a framework to model and eventually implement crowd-based SCS.
Consequently, we distinguish between the conceptual framework that is used for
modelling a crowd-based SCS and the artefacts that implement actual models. With the
conceptual framework we intend to model social spaces that enable participating agents
to perform a variety of social tasks, that are particular of crowd-based SCS. Namely,
define and broadcast a collective challenge, accept a call, perform the individual tasks
involved in the challenge, compile the responses to the challenge, assess whether the
tasks are properly completed and the rewards entailed by accomplishing a task are
being properly granted, etc. Along this conceptual framework we presume that there will
be technological artefacts that serve to implement actual systems that are modelled with
the conceptual framework.</p>
        <p>In order to enable crowdsourcing tasks, the conceptual framework needs to
“afford” the designer, and ultimately the participating agents, the means to specify and
apprehend the social space where those tasks take place. Because we intend to use the
conceptual framework to model crowd-based SCS, we will refer to it as a metamodel.</p>
        <p>Although it is beyond the scope of this paper to give a formal definition, a
metamodel is a collection of affordances each of these specified as a class of formalisms.
Loosely speaking, the metamodel should afford agents those aspects of the social
context that enable them to act proficiently. Hence, the metamodel should include means
to formalise (i) the contents of the shared context, (ii) the features of the agents that
participate in it, (iii) their interactions and (iv) the overall behaviour of the system.</p>
        <p>These affordances should involve, for example, the means to establish and become
aware of how much is revealed of the individual’s identity, and how individuals become
aware of other participants in a given activity. Moreover, agents would need to have
means to communicate in non-ambiguous terms, and that implies that, at the very least,
the metamodel shall afford some shared ontology, communication language and
interaction model. Coordination is usually achieved by organising the crowdsourced system
into activities, usually collective, that may be executed in parallel or following certain
rules that link them by time, causality or whatever (for instance, in Wikipedia,
editing articles, handling disputes, quality review,...). In most SCS one may reify a social
structure, however primitive, where individuals are meant to play roles (e.g., editor,
administrator, bureaucrat in Wikipedia) that entail some capabilities and are frequently
subject to rules that apply to individuals only while they play that role. More
sophisticated social structures involving groups, hierarchies and organisations are used to
better coordinate complex projects.5 Likewise there are usually means through which the
designer may specify the “rules of the game” (see for example the “five pillars” of
5 For instance in the crowd-sourced drafting of the Constitution of Iceland, Parliament created
a Constitutional Council, whose members were citizens voted by the population, this Council
was then organised in three working groups who produced recommendations to the council,
that received comments from the public through the Council’s webpage, and were submitted in
turn to the Council and incorporated into a “process document” that was again open to public
comments until a “draft proposition” was made by the Council. http://stjornlagarad.is/english/
Wikipedia and the associated guidelines and polices) and how to enforce and update
them; and for participants to be informed of these rules, of their application and of any
possibility of changing them.
3.2</p>
      </sec>
      <sec id="sec-3-2">
        <title>A tentative list of affordances for Crowd-Based SCS</title>
        <p>
          We presume it is possible to propose a single conceptual framework that allows the
modelling of a large class of CBSCS. That is an empirical question that can only be
answered with a systematic analysis of existing crowd-based sociocognitive systemsand a
serious attempt at the design of new ones. Nevertheless, after our experience with
electronic institutions [
          <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref3">3</xref>
          ], a discussion of normative MAS [
          <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref6">6</xref>
          ] and a superficial inspection
of three other paradigmatic SCS classes (gaming, simulation and policy-making[
          <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref7">10, 7</xref>
          ])
we propose a tentative list of affordances that we claim should be included and made
precise in an abstract conceptual framework for crowd-based sociocognitive systems.
Agent types and agent socio-cognitive models Probably three types are enough: (A1)
humans or real world organisations that commission or execute a task; (A2)
software agents that commission or execute a task; (B) server agents that perform
management or support functions (for instance, enact a collective process, search for
potential executioners, remind executioners of pending tasks, evaluate task
performance, perform police-like and time-keeping functions). For each of these types
we may want to make explicit the socio-cognitive dispositions that agents have or
should have.
        </p>
        <p>Domain ontology. This will include the elements the are used to define the content of
collective contexts and interactions. For example, in change.org the ontology
would include petition, signature, motivation, proposer, number of signatures. in
Wikipedia, articles, review, update, guideline, editor, bureaucrat, dispute, etc.
Languages. These are needed to define the behaviour of the system and the way it is
regulated. These may be organised as a hierarchy of languages that starts with a
domain language (to refer to the domain ontology); communication language,
action languages (description of an action); f constraint languages (preconditions and
post-conditions of actions); normative languages (procedural, functional or
operational directions; behavioural rules,...) and so on, depending on the complexity of
the crowd-based system
Interaction contexts are needed to define separate collective activities and their
interrelations. They are ideal locations or activities where several agents interact
simultaneously, sharing the same state) (they correspond to EI’s ”scenes”). For instance
a Turk challenge, a Wikipedia dispute over an article, the trading process of a
prediction market. When a CBSCS involves several activities, it should be possible to
specify how several local context may be connected and how individuals may move
between them.</p>
        <p>Actions . Atomic actions like “speak”, “move to another interaction context”’;
complex actions like “broadcast”, “execute”, e.g. in Wikipedia: create, edit, censor an
article, introduce a guideline or a norm, participate in a dispute.</p>
        <p>Information structures. The (shared) state of the system (the value of each and
every variable that may change through the action of some agent or the passing of
time) and the shared state of local contexts (generally, subsets of the state of the
system); profile of participants, performance indicators, data structures associated
with composite actions, ...</p>
        <p>Social constructs. Describe the way individuals are related among themselves and
also serve as means to refer to individuals and groups of agents by the role they
play, rather than by who they actually are. These may include: roles; relations
among roles (n-ary relationships between individuals as well as higher-order
relationships. i.e, groups, hierarchies of roles, power relationships and so on);
organisations (groups plus coordination conventions).</p>
        <p>Regulatory system. To allow top-down or bottom-up articulation of interactions: e.g.,
norms of different types (procedural, constitutional, rules of behaviour,..) with their
associated features (relationships between norms, incentives, effects of compliance
and non-compliance,...)
Inference. Assumptions about different ways of inferring intended or observed
behaviour. Ways to model reasoning under uncertainty and alternatives to classical
forms of inference like argumentation of coherence.</p>
        <p>Social order mechanisms. To allow top-down or bottom-up governance. Among these:
regimentation (rendering some actions impossible, strict application of sanctions,...);
mechanisms for assessment, evaluation, prosecution and punishment of non-compliance;
social devices (trust, reputation, prestige, status, gossip); policing devices (law
enforcement),...</p>
        <p>Performance indicators. To measure the behaviour of the system by the designer and
qualified participants.</p>
        <p>Evolution. Means by which the system may change over time (adaptation of agents,
bottom-up, negotiated, external change of system regulations) and devices involved
in producing that change happens: performance indicators, normative transition
functions and such.
4</p>
      </sec>
    </sec>
    <sec id="sec-4">
      <title>Concluding Remarks</title>
      <p>4.1</p>
      <sec id="sec-4-1">
        <title>The affordances challenge</title>
        <p>The list of affordances we used in the previous section is biased by our previous
attempts with games, simulation and policy-making. This list is inadequate for two main
reasons: It is a mix of heterogenous notions : languages and ontology, for instance, are
not like “inference” or “social order mechanisms”, which are easier to assimilate to a
collection of formalisms each providing a different flavour to the same type of
functionality. Second, it is not complete, or not explicit enough. For instance, What are the
affordances that explain the main functionalities of the Amazon Turk? or Where does
one capture the requirements of crowdness or the way one may filter the participation
of given individuals?</p>
        <p>There is another matter to ponder: Should the list of affordances be different in
crowd-based SCS and other classes of SCS (say games or electronic markets)? What
would the advanges be for one answer over the other? How may this issue be settled?
4.2</p>
      </sec>
      <sec id="sec-4-2">
        <title>The expressiveness trade-off.</title>
        <p>
          As suggested above, an affordance should entail those conceptual elements that when
properly specified allow for a precise specification of the way the CBSCS enables
certain functionalities. Ideally, that precise incarnation ought to be made operational
through technological artefacts that implement those functionalities. As discussed in
[
          <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref6">6</xref>
          ] the metamodel may choose among several available formalisations of a given
affordance, depending on the functionality desired, and each formalisation will be
implemented possibly in different ways choosing among available artefacts. However, there is
a “whorfian” expressiveness paradox: once a formalism is chosen, then the
implementation of the affordance is conditioned by the chosen formalism and the corresponding
choice of artefacts, and vice-versa.6
        </p>
        <p>When there is a collection of artefacts that are coherent, interoperate and are
integrated on a working computational architecture, they are usually called a platform.
Ideally, the metamodels we foresee should allow a formal representation of
platformindependent models whose implementation will eventually depend on available
artefacts. If one is lucky enough to have a platform that integrates those artefacts, including
a specification language, the transcription of those platform-independent into
platformdependent implementation is a relatively simple task, modulo the“expressiveness
paradox.”</p>
        <p>As with other representation of a class of problems (e.g. norms, planning,
workflows), there is a trade-off between the generality of the framework that is used to
describe (and formalise) a sub-class of those problems and the ease with which a sub-class
of those problems is represented in the framework.7</p>
        <p>
          Currently, many working CBSCS are not platform-independent and some forms of
crowd coordination have proliferated because practical platforms are available. Let’s
examine three paradigmatic cases, of platform dependent classes of systems:
Mechanical Turk-enabled projects, prediction markets and Ushahidi crisis mapping .[
          <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref4">4</xref>
          ] Two
obvious remarks apply to the three examples: First, the three examples are designed
using platform-dependent models. That is, they are founded on particular technological
artefacts (or platform) that restrict CBSCS design to involve only those features that are
afforded and implemented by the particular artefacts (or platform). In other words, they
can model only the systems that can be implemented with the corresponding artefacts.
Second, these platforms are the nuclei of the corresponding crowd-based SCS but are
not necessarily powerful enough to model and implement an actual crowd-based SCS
and, as we shall show, not enough for the three examples at hand. Now, in particular,
– The Amazon Mechanical Turk (https://www.mturk.com) is a full-fledged platform
that applies to different sorts of microwork, and its metamodel affords means for
specifying, enacting and evaluating projects that have one single activity, performed
6 The usual, but not altogether false, misreading of B.L. Whorf (in [11]) as the postulate that the
structure of anyone’s native language strongly influences or fully determines the worldview he
will acquire as he learns the language.
7 We have come across that trade-off in the case of electronic institutions where the rich language
for describing transitions between scenes are unnecessarily cumbersome in work-flows that
can be hard-wired( in e-commerce, for instance).
        </p>
        <p>as a mutitude of micro-tasks by populations whose members may be filtered into
the project from an open pool. It is Amazon, and not the Turk platform, who
provides the additional services that allow the management of projects through other
artefacts.
– Prediction markets may be implemented in different platforms—for example the
Iowa Electronic Market (tippie.uiowa.edu/iem/) or iPredict (www.ipredict.co.nz/)—
each of them is a regimented implementation of a particular futures market with
its own notion of contracts, its trading protocols, entry and compensation
requirements, the definition of an event to predict. and so on They are open to traders that
fulfil some requirements but there is a unique model for each platform, and no more
affordances may be included in their CBSCS.
– The Ushahidi platform (http://ushahidi.com/products/ushahidi-platform) gravitates
around the Usahidi map, an artefact that consists of a graphical representation of
geo-referenced data that belong to an explicit taxonomy of relevant events. This
platform supports the collection, interactive mapping and visualisation of events
but the implementation of an actual crisis follow-up SCS needs to be complemented
with other ad-hoc artefacts for integrating, filtering and deciding on how to use
incoming data. Thus, while the mapping activity has a single model, the metamodel
for crisis management needs to afford other features depending on the
organisational structure of the management organisation and the functions it assumes during
the crisis.</p>
        <p>We presume that it is possible and useful to strive for platform-independent models,
and we believe that it is possible to meet this challenge. Evidently, a good analysis
of currently available platforms is an immediate step to take towards the affordances
challenge.
4.3</p>
      </sec>
      <sec id="sec-4-3">
        <title>A call to arms</title>
        <p>This is simply to say to our colleagues in the research field of normative multi-agent
systems and in areas of the social sciences, that the theories, models and methodologies
that we have developed in the last 20 years or so can be brought to the design and
analysis of the increasing plethora of crowd-based socio-cognitive systems. There are
several goals that we outlined above but in the immediate term there are several issues
we need to address first that we consider here.</p>
        <p>We propose to start with an empirical study of existing crowd-based sociocognitive
systemsthat should enlighten the development of an abstract conceptual framework for
modelling CBSCS, or support the convenience of developing several metamodels. We
think that the achievement of a clear description of that conceptual framework should
open the way to the assembly of technological artefacts and the development of
crowdbased platforms that allow design and use of CBSCS whose properties can be
ascertained formally and ideally proven to be correctly implemented.</p>
        <p>
          The steps to follow, in our opinion, are:
1. Compile a set of CBSCS “examples” that map out the space of such systems clearly.
2. Produce a more rigorous description of the universe of CBSCS by developing the
16 dimensions we have posed above.
3. Identify precise descriptions of the entities (in each example) that permitted
modelling and implementation of affordances (also to be described with precision)
present in the models.
4. Develop this model and framework using formal methods in order to ensure
clarity, rigour and portability of our ideas. (Using techniques for developing formal
conceptual frameworks such as [
          <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref5">5</xref>
          ] for example.)
5. Contrast this analysis with the tentative list of characteristics we have developed
above and refine these.
6. Based on that outcome, draft a single conceptual framework.
7. Classify existing and future CBSCS and formulate classification schemata to apply
these ideas.
8. Identify useful technological artefacts to implement the components of the
conceptual framework.
9. Develop proof-of-concept CBSCS, analyse and postulate preliminary
methodological guidelines for those interested in designing such systems.
        </p>
        <p>We hope that we have made it clear why our models and method are of interested
to those participating in the workshop as well as a introducing a tentative road map of
how an interdisciplinary community might emerge through contribution to the explicit
components that we identify in the roadmap of research above.
9. James Surowiecki. The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and
How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies and Nations. Little, Brown,
2004. ISBN 0-316-86173-1.
10. Harko Verhagen, Pablo Noriega, and Mark d’Inverno. Towards a design framework for
controlled hybrid social games. In Harko Verhagen, Pablo Noriega, Tina Balke, and
Marina de Vos, editors, Social Coordination: Principles, Artifacts and Theories (Social.PATH),
pages 83–87, Exeter, UK, 03/04/2013 2013. The Society for the Study of Artificial
Intelligence and the Simulation of Behaviour.
11. Benjamin Lee Whorf. The relation of habitual thought and behavior to language. In J.B.</p>
        <p>Carroll, editor, Language, Thought, and Reality: Selected Writings of Benjamin Lee Whorf,
pages 134–159. MIT Press, 1956. ISBN 0-262-73006-5.
12. Matthew Yee-King and Mark d’Inverno. Pedagogical agents for social music learning in
crowd-based socio-cognitive systems. In Crowd Intelligence: Foundations, Methods and
Practices. European Network for Social Intelligence, Barcelona, January 2104.</p>
      </sec>
    </sec>
  </body>
  <back>
    <ref-list>
      <ref id="ref1">
        <mixed-citation>
          1.
          <string-name>
            <given-names>Alexander</given-names>
            <surname>Artikis Andrew Jones</surname>
          </string-name>
          and
          <string-name>
            <given-names>Jeremy</given-names>
            <surname>Pitt</surname>
          </string-name>
          .
          <article-title>The design of intelligent socio-technical systems</article-title>
          .
          <source>Artificial Intelligence Review</source>
          ,
          <volume>39</volume>
          (
          <issue>1</issue>
          ):
          <fpage>5</fpage>
          -
          <lpage>20</lpage>
          , May
          <year>2013</year>
          .
        </mixed-citation>
      </ref>
      <ref id="ref2">
        <mixed-citation>
          2.
          <string-name>
            <given-names>Cristiano</given-names>
            <surname>Castelfranchi</surname>
          </string-name>
          .
          <article-title>Minds as social institutions</article-title>
          .
          <source>Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences</source>
          , pages
          <fpage>1</fpage>
          -
          <lpage>23</lpage>
          , forthcoming.
        </mixed-citation>
      </ref>
      <ref id="ref3">
        <mixed-citation>
          3.
          <string-name>
            <surname>Mark d'Inverno</surname>
            ,
            <given-names>Michael</given-names>
          </string-name>
          <string-name>
            <surname>Luck</surname>
          </string-name>
          , Pablo Noriega, Juan A.
          <string-name>
            <surname>Rodriguez-Aguilar</surname>
            , and
            <given-names>Carles</given-names>
          </string-name>
          <string-name>
            <surname>Sierra</surname>
          </string-name>
          .
          <article-title>Communicating open systems</article-title>
          .
          <source>Artificial Intelligence</source>
          ,
          <volume>186</volume>
          (
          <issue>0</issue>
          ):
          <fpage>38</fpage>
          -
          <lpage>94</lpage>
          ,
          <year>2012</year>
          .
        </mixed-citation>
      </ref>
      <ref id="ref4">
        <mixed-citation>
          4.
          <string-name>
            <given-names>Jessica</given-names>
            <surname>Heinzelman</surname>
          </string-name>
          , Rachel Brown, and Patrick Meier.
          <article-title>Mobile technology, crowdsourcing and peace mapping: New theory and applications for conflict management</article-title>
          . In Marta Poblet, editor,
          <source>Mobile Technologies for Conflict Management</source>
          , volume
          <volume>2</volume>
          of Law,
          <source>Governance and Technology Series</source>
          , pages
          <fpage>39</fpage>
          -
          <lpage>53</lpage>
          . Springer Netherlands,
          <year>2011</year>
          .
        </mixed-citation>
      </ref>
      <ref id="ref5">
        <mixed-citation>
          5.
          <string-name>
            <given-names>M.</given-names>
            <surname>Luck</surname>
          </string-name>
          and
          <string-name>
            <surname>M.</surname>
          </string-name>
          <article-title>d'Inverno. Structuring a Z specification to provide a formal framework for autonomous agent systems</article-title>
          . In J. P. Bowen and M. G. Hinchey, editors,
          <source>ZUM'95: 9th International Conference of Z Users, Lecture Notes in Computer Science</source>
          , pages
          <fpage>47</fpage>
          -
          <lpage>62</lpage>
          , Heidelberg,
          <year>1995</year>
          . Springer-Verlag.
        </mixed-citation>
      </ref>
      <ref id="ref6">
        <mixed-citation>
          6.
          <string-name>
            <given-names>Pablo</given-names>
            <surname>Noriega</surname>
          </string-name>
          ,
          <string-name>
            <surname>Amit K. Chopra</surname>
            , Nicoletta Fornara, Henrique Lopes Cardoso, and
            <given-names>Munindar P.</given-names>
          </string-name>
          <string-name>
            <surname>Singh. Regulated</surname>
            <given-names>MAS</given-names>
          </string-name>
          :
          <article-title>Social Perspective</article-title>
          . In Giulia Andrighetto, Guido Governatori, Pablo Noriega, and Leendert W. N. van der Torre, editors,
          <source>Normative Multi-Agent Systems</source>
          , volume
          <volume>4</volume>
          of Dagstuhl Follow-Ups, pages
          <fpage>93</fpage>
          -
          <lpage>133</lpage>
          .
          <article-title>Schloss Dagstuhl-Leibniz-Zentrum fuer Informatik</article-title>
          , Dagstuhl, Germany,
          <year>2013</year>
          .
        </mixed-citation>
      </ref>
      <ref id="ref7">
        <mixed-citation>
          7.
          <string-name>
            <given-names>Pablo</given-names>
            <surname>Noriega</surname>
          </string-name>
          and
          <string-name>
            <given-names>Julian</given-names>
            <surname>Padget</surname>
          </string-name>
          .
          <article-title>Approaching social coordination from a normative perspective</article-title>
          . In Harko Verhagen, editor,
          <source>Analytical Sociology, Social Coordination and Informatics</source>
          ,
          <volume>06</volume>
          /06/
          <year>2013</year>
          2013.
        </mixed-citation>
      </ref>
      <ref id="ref8">
        <mixed-citation>
          8.
          <string-name>
            <surname>Donald</surname>
            <given-names>A.</given-names>
          </string-name>
          <string-name>
            <surname>Norman</surname>
          </string-name>
          . Affordance, conventions, and design.
          <source>interactions</source>
          ,
          <volume>6</volume>
          (
          <issue>3</issue>
          ):
          <fpage>38</fpage>
          -
          <lpage>43</lpage>
          , May
          <year>1999</year>
          .
        </mixed-citation>
      </ref>
    </ref-list>
  </back>
</article>