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The design of intelligent socio-technical systems

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Abstract

The design of intelligent socio-technical systems calls for careful examination of relevant social and organizational concepts. We present a method for supporting this design process, placing emphasis on different levels of formal characterization, with equal attention to both the analysis of concepts in a formal calculus independent of computational concerns, and the representation of concepts in a machine-processable form, fully cognizant of implementation issues—a step in the method we refer to as principled operationalization. There are many tools (i.e. formal languages) that can be used to support the design method; we define and discuss criteria for evaluating such tools. We believe that, were the method proposed to be adopted, it would enhance the state-of-the-art in the systematic design and engineering of socio-technical systems, respecting the fundamentally interdisciplinary nature of those tasks, in both their theoretical and practical dimensions.

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Notes

  1. An earlier version of Sect. 2.1 appeared in Jones et al. (2011).

  2. One of the reviewers of this paper pointed out that the NASA Challenger Space Shuttle disaster could provide an interesting real-world example illustrating the respective roles of Test Engineers and Project Supervisors.

  3. We note that it has been observed in biologically-inspired computing that some programmed systems have ‘drifted’ from the original source of inspiration, and so become inadequate either as a simulation for answering questions about the nature of real immune systems, or as a foundation for other related problems. This observation provides an interesting parallel to our concerns about trends in the design of socio-technical systems.

  4. Herzig and Lorini elaborate the analysis in terms of two sets of conditions, for what they call occurrent and dispositional trust.

  5. Various alternative accounts of counts-as conditionals appeared later on, and these are summarized and critically compared in Grossi and Jones, in press.

  6. Pörn’s book is full of valuable insights regarding the formal modelling of various aspects of social interaction. Regrettably, his work has been largely overlooked by researchers in the field of Agents and Multi-agent Systems.

  7. A suggestion of this sort was first put forward in the description of the multi-modal logical framework developed as part of the EC-financed ALFEBIITE project (IST-1999-10298, 01-02-2000 to 30-11-2003).

  8. Over 50 years ago, Layman Allen began arguing the case for applying logic as a tool in legal drafting; see, e.g., Allen (1957).

  9. Essentially, these are conditional obligations that come into force when some other obligation has been violated.

  10. In future work, it would be interesting to explore comparisons between the History of Computer Science and the History of (other parts of) Engineering. Furthermore, as one of the reviewers has observed, we might usefully consider discussions of modeling in the Philosophy of Social Science, with a view to developing our position regarding the respective roles of conceptual and computational models.

  11. However, in some interesting comments, Davide Grossi (personal communication) has suggested to us that aspects of the history of BDI in Artificial Intelligence do in fact provide such an example.

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Acknowledgments

The preparation of this paper benefited from the comments of Gunnar Coll, Robert Demolombe, Davide Grossi and the late Steve Barker. We thank also the reviewers for their valuable insights and suggestions.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Informatics, King’s College London, London, UK

    Andrew J. I. Jones

  2. National Centre for Scientific Research ‘Demokritos’, Athens, Greece

    Alexander Artikis

  3. Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Imperial College London, London, UK

    Jeremy Pitt

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  1. Andrew J. I. Jones
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  2. Alexander Artikis
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  3. Jeremy Pitt
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Correspondence to Andrew J. I. Jones.

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Jones, A.J.I., Artikis, A. & Pitt, J. The design of intelligent socio-technical systems. Artif Intell Rev 39, 5–20 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10462-012-9387-2

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