Social computers have been characterised as complex systems that harness the innate problem solving, action and information gathering powers of humans and the environments in which they live to tackle social and economic problems:
- The hardware of a social computer is supplied by humans (taken as individuals as well as collectively in the form of human-powered institutions) and the environment where these humans live, including all relevant artifacts which can be natural or man-made, as well as computational devices.
- The software of a social computer is comprised of human capabilities, organisational and social rules and norms, social conventions, as well as computer software.
- The algorithms of social computation are defined by socially accepted goals and corresponding actions which can be taken to achieve local as well as global goals.
- Finally, the processing of algorithms in social computers are collective, decentralised, goal-oriented actions whose emergent results can be iteratively evaluated and steered towards active goals.
Social computers can be found in natura in a variety of scenarios, as well as designed to tackle specific issues of social and economic relevance. They are evolving social systems, whose components (i.e. their hardware, software, algorithms and processing) are dynamically and evolutionarily designed together with their goals and available resources. The analysis and design of social computers require novel methodological practices, blending existing techniques and experiences from applied social sciences and computational sciences. In order to design, implement and continuously refine social computers, specialised languages are required to build specifications, and corresponding computational platforms are required to support, manage and provide a computational realisation of social computations. An essential aspect to be represented in such languages is interaction between components of social computers, so that the internal behaviour of these components can be abstracted and the resulting systems can be analysed as a whole. Additionally, since these languages should be used to communicate specifications as well as processing results to participants in social computers (including humans who behave as components in social computers), they should be concise and simple to understand. Finally, in order to build social computers whose behaviour can be verified with respect to desired requirements and attributes, these languages should have a formal underpinning and the corresponding specifications and processing results should be formally verifiable. In the present workshop we invite authors to present ongoing efforts to model complex systems as social computers, as well as initiatives to build platforms to design and implement social computers which fulfill, at least partially, the list of requirements outlined in the previous paragraph. Workshop format This workshop has been accepted as part of IJCAI 2015. This workshop is designed to be a one-day workshop. Authors of selected articles will be invited to deliver short presentations during the morning, and in the afternoon an open panel discussion will follow, in which workshop participants will be expected to discuss methodological issues and potential applications for social computing. The workshop will close with the joint preparation of a draft research agenda for social computing, to be published in the workshop proceedings. Authors are invited to submit articles presenting ongoing efforts to build platforms for social computing, as well as to build social machines employing existing platforms. Topics of interest include (but are by no means not restricted to):
- Descriptions of platforms for social computing, in every stage of their lifecycles (i.e. from design specifications to actual implementations).
- Discussions of relevant issues related to social computing, including economical, ethical and philosophical issues, as well as engineering issues related to computational complexity and ergonomics of social computing platforms.
- Discussions of potential and actual applications of social computing in all sorts of relevant scenarios.
Submitted papers are requested to follow the formatting requirements of IJCAI 2015 main CFP. Submissions should be made through EasyChair. Keynote speaker We are pleased and honoured to announce that we will have a keynote presentation by Prof. Fausto Giunchiglia (University of Trento). Important dates
- April 27th — article submission (submission details will be available soon).
- May 20th — acceptance notification.
- May 30th — deadline for final camera ready submission.
At least one author of each accepted article will be requested to register for the workshop and attend the event to confirm publication of the article in the workshop proceedings. Workshop chairs
- Flavio S. Correa da Silva, University of Sao Paulo, Brazil (email@example.com)
- Wamberto W. Vasconcelos, University of Aberdeen, UK (firstname.lastname@example.org)
- David S. Robertson, University of Edinburgh, UK (email@example.com)
- Stefania Bandini (CSAI, Italy)
- Martin Caminada (University of Aberdeen, UK)
- Carlos Chesnevar (Universidad Nacional del Sur, Argentina)
- Amit Chopra (Lancaster University, UK)
- Paul Chung (Loughborough University, UK)
- Kieron o’Hara (University of Southampton, UK)
- Celso Hirata (Instituto Tecnologico de Aeronautica, Brazil)
- Siu-Wai Leung (University of Macau, China)
- Ana de Melo (University of Sao Paulo, Brazil)
- Daniele Miorandi (CREATE-NET, Italy)
- David Murray-Rust (University of Edinburgh, UK)
- Nir Oren (University of Aberdeen, UK)
- Claudia Pagliari (University of Edinburgh, UK)
- Iyad Rahwan (Masdar Institute of Science and Technology, UAE)
- David de Roure (University of Oxford, UK)
- Michael Rovatsos (University of Edinburgh, UK)
- Marco Schorlemmer (Artificial Intelligence Research Institute, Spain)
- Hong-Linh Truong (Vienna University of Technology, Austria)
- Mirtha Venero (UFABC, Brazil)
- Giuseppe Vizzari (University of Milano-Bicocca, Italy)