Which “agent” is computing?

1. The Requirements Problem in Social ComputingPanel discussion, RESC@RE11,Trento, August 29, 2011Fausto giunchigliaDISI– Dipartimento di Ingegneria e Scienza dell’InformazioneUniversity of Trento

2. Which “agent” is computing? • Social computing (most often): computer agents in collaboration with humans (activated by humans) • Social computation(the social computer): human agents in collaboration with computers • Key differences: • Requirements, theory of computation • How do you write your criteria of success (specifications)

3. Social computing(DARPA Balloon Challenge) Problem specification: Ten red weather balloons will be launched at a specified time in different locations across the USA. Design a computation that finds them all in the shortest time. Prize for the winner $40,000

4. Social computations (of the social computer)Internet scale human problem solving • 30 million people suffer from rare diseases in Europe. • There are 8000 rare diseases. • Only 1900 of these are diagnosable. • No Member State Health Service offers diagnostic services in all 1900 conditions • Conventional“long tail” problem

5. Social Computers beyond Social Computing Social control of healthcare and disease Social computation decentralised through society • Problems in this space have: • Small, direct impact locally magnified when replicated across global society; • or • Huge, potential impact globally but need a social infrastructure to harness the local ingenuity and data of humans/sensors. Compute and data intensiveness of solution Conventional computation Social decentralised systems (social computing) Social intensiveness of solution E-Bay Facebook DARPA Network Challenge

6. RE for the Social Computers Existingsystems can be mapped on a 2-dimensional spacedetermined by: • Computational and data Intensiveness: differentmodes for capturing, storing, analyzing data and integrating with human activities, contexts and documents; exploitingresults for provision of services • Social inclusiveness: differentforms of social information processing (e.g., blogs, wikis, SN platforms etc.) that involve –to variousextents– large amounts of data from large amount of Whatis new?

7. Research challenges (1) • Development of advanced mechanisms to combine human capabilities, computers and networks into new forms of human organization and social activity, e.g. • network protocols including social rules, incentives; • customizable computer programs • Integration of social sciences/humanities and ICT – the former will determine the design of Social Computers and the Internet, the latter will implement it • Development of new science, engineering and infrastructures that will provide unprecedented data to social sciences

8. Research challenges (2) 7mainscientificinterdisciplinarychallengesarise and shouldbemet: • Enablinghuman- social computer symbiosis • Enablingcomputationalsocieties • Managinghuman, social and technologicaldiversity and itsimpacts on social computation • Managing the evolution in timeofhumanns, society and technology and their impact on social computation • Guaranteeing privacy and security ofindividuals • Developmentof a science of the New Internet • Engineering the infrastructuretoevaluate and test Social Computer applications

9. Where do we start? • Case study driven • Need real world experimentation • I have started with “Science as social computation” • Current exercise: IJCAI “computational” community

10. The Social Computer Internet-Scale Human Problem Solving Thank you!