Abstract: Social agents operate in a milieu where their interactions are repeated, norms are ususally observed, and equilibria may be attained. We will begin with a survey of some ways to model such communities of agents, including some game-theoretic techniques. The main issues will be outlined, identifying the inadequacies of current models. Then we will examine the use of answer set programs, enhanced with social predicates such as beliefs and inclinations, may remedy some of these inadequacies. Examples of how to encode agents that play some classical iterated games, with the intervention of beiefs, will be used to illustrate the ideas.

Biography: Norman Foo graduated B.E. and ME in Electrical Engineering, Canterbury University, and M.A. and PhD in Computer and Communication Sciences, University of Michigan. He was a communications engineer with Telecom Malaysia in between graduate degrees, and has been visiting professor in the T.J. Watson School of Advanced Studies, State University of New York, the IBM Systems Research Institute and T.J. Watson Research Laboratories, and the University of Birmingham. From 1975 he was with the Basser Department of Computer, Sydney University where he eventually held a personal chair as Professor of Knowledge Systems. In 1996 he moved to the Department of Artificial Intelligence, School of Computer Science and Engineering, University of New South Wales. Norman was seconded to NICTA as Program Leader of the Knowldege Representation and Reasoning Program from 2002 to April 2005. He is now Emeritus Professor in the University of New South Wales, and Visiting Professor in the Univesity of Bath. He is on the editorial boards of the International Journal of General Systems, and Knowledge and Information Systems. He has served on the program committees of leading international conferences and workshops. His current interests and publications include the following areas: belief revision and merging; logics of action; ontology revision; emergence and systems complexity; systems theory; coherence of theories; diagrammatic reasoning; answer set programming; game theory, negotiation and social agents.