Clara SMITH - Universidad Nacional de La Plata - Argentina

Responsibility of agents in non contractual scenarios. A multi-modal account

Theorizing in domains such as legal and cognitive status of agents is crucial for designers of agent systems, especially, for those who design “on demand” MAS. Within this engineering approach, a lawful question arises: do the designed agents are to be autonomous enough to have rights and responsibilities?. What justifies -in the head of another agent different from the one acting- the obligation to compensate is the fact that a principal agent has lengthen its own action through the implementation of a foreign activity for its own interests. We focus on the legal binding between a principal agent and a helper (or dependent) agent. But we keep apart from this analysis those situations in which the performance in the interest of another one has its origin in a contract (this because, in contracts, function for another one and subordination are somehow straightforward to identify, mainly because in a contract there is an explicit notion of obligation involved). Therefore, we discuss the impact of the helper’s harmful performance that has its origin in extra contractual situations e.g factual, occasional situations, altruistic behaviour, or courtesy. We devise two relativized modal operators for representing, respectively, intentions in the interest of another agent and agency in the interest of another agent. They are useful for characterizing the concept of responsibility by reflex in a multi-modal multi-agent system (MAS) context.