Stefan Johansson, BTH
Flertomtesystem (title kept due to historical reasons. JM)
ABSTRACT of the talk on 29th August, 15-17, AI seminar series

In Multi-agent Systems (MAS), agents express (at some level) the 
preferences of their owners. However, often these preferences are 
interpreted by the software of the agents, which are other preferences 
set by the designers of the agents. When adding the preferences of the 
owners and designers of the technical platform on which the agents 
(inter-)act, we get a quite complex picture of preferences in a MAS 
evolving over time.

Speaking about emerging properties in a system is not a new invention, 
on the contrary, it has been used more than a century to describe 
unpredictable properties of systems. We will discuss under what 
circumstances and in what way emergence can exist in computer based 
systems, e.g. a MAS, relating to the different definitions of the concept.
If time permits, we will also discuss under what conditions agents are 
able to build coalitions by themselves, based on rational decisions 
among the agents.