Section 2: Multiagent Systems

Key Learning Points

• To review the progress toward creating a new species of machine, machina economicus, and discuss some challenges in designing agents that can reason effectively in economic contexts.
• Describe how to analyze, describe, and design environments in which agents can operate effectively and interact with each other productively.
• Explain and use communication protocols that enable agents to exchange and understand messages.
• Explain and use interaction protocols that enable agents to have conversations, which, for our purposes, are structured exchanges of messages.
• Review progress toward creating a new species of machine, machina economicus.
• Discuss some challenges in designing agents that can reason effectively in economic contexts.

Activities

1. Read the following articles:
   1. Huhns, M. N., & Stephens, L. M. 1999. Multiagent systems and societies of agents. In G. Weiss (Ed.), Multiagent systems: A modern approach to distributed artificial intelligence (pp. 79–120). Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
   2. David C. Parkes and Michael P. Wellman, Economic reasoning and artificial intelligence, Science 349, 267–272 (2015); DOI: 10.1126/science.aaa8403.
2. Discuss the following questions in the discussion forum:
   1. Why should we be interested in distributed systems of agents?
   2. What are the differences between traditional distributed systems and multiagent systems?