Stages of autonomy determination

Abstract

We discuss stages of autonomy determination for software agents that manage and manipulate knowledge in organizations that house other software agents and human knowledge workers. We suggest recognition of potential autonomies in the belief-desire-intention (BDI) paradigm and actual reasoning about autonomy choice decision theoretically. We show how agents might revise their autonomies in light of one another's autonomy and might also experience new, derived autonomies. We discuss the conditions under which an entire group of agents might have a collective autonomy attitude toward agents outside their group. We believe group attitudes are a novel concept and form a strong basis for developing theories of dynamic organizational structure. We briefly sketch an outline of a case study that motivates reasoning about autonomies.