Discussion session about

1
AAAI Spring Symposium 2003 on Agent-Mediated
Knowledge Management (AMKM 2003)San Francisco,
24-26 March 2003

• Discussion session about
• Directions for Agent-Mediated Knowledge
  Management
•  
•  
• During the discussion there were raised some
  questions
• We have tried to answer with some remarks and
  classifications
•  

2
Directions for Agent-Mediated Knowledge Management
AAAI Spring Symposium 2003 on Agent-Mediated
Knowledge Management (AMKM 2003)San Francisco,
24-26 March 2003

• Initial question
• Are directions for AMKM depending on the
  characteristics of the domain?
•  
• 1st classification (distinguishes between
  different problems or domains)
• - Well Defined Domains (WDD) where we can use
  formal approaches for knowledge representation
  and manipulation (like the BDI approach)
• - Ill Defined Domains (IDD) where formal
  approaches are more difficult to apply we can
  get inspiration from non-formal tools used by
  social and cognitive sciences to represent
  knowledge
• example cognitive, conceptual and topic maps can
  be useful in this situations
• Remark in cognitive mapping terms in WDD there
  is a correspondence between some concept and its
  context in IDD this correspondence is hard to
  identify

3
Directions for Agent-Mediated Knowledge Management
AAAI Spring Symposium 2003 on Agent-Mediated
Knowledge Management (AMKM 2003)San Francisco,
24-26 March 2003

• But... What are the goals of KM?
•  
• (2rd classification) Goals of KM
• - to maintain the memory (of an organization) -
  agents are repositories of knowledge, MAS are
  repositories of different points of view
• we have discussed the example of nuclear
  industry, where culture and expertise is being
  dissipated
• - to support individual knowledge acquisition and
  organizational learning
• remarks
• - simulation of disturbing factors in the
  organization can lead to knowledge acquisition
  (can lead to the understanding of how does the
  organization react)
• situations of instability give raise of
  processes of knowledge acquisition. Knowledge
  increases when ill defined problems are solved,
  and this knowledge acquisition processes can be
  facilitated by agents

4
Directions for Agent-Mediated Knowledge Management
AAAI Spring Symposium 2003 on Agent-Mediated
Knowledge Management (AMKM 2003)San Francisco,
24-26 March 2003
What are the agents roles in an IS?   (4th
classification) Agent roles 1st order processes
operational tasks that agents can perform 2nd
order processes (KM roles) concerning the use
of agents potential to support emergent
processes (as facilitators of organizational
learning). The support of KM can lead to the
treatment of conflicts / incoherences .   Do we
want to give agents the capacity of conflict
solving?   - KM prepares people - the conflict
resolution should be a human decision KM is as
an environment that facilitates decisions,
conflict resolution and learning - an important
direction is to manage the agreement and
disagreement zones in IDD
5
Directions for Agent-Mediated Knowledge Management
AAAI Spring Symposium 2003 on Agent-Mediated
Knowledge Management (AMKM 2003)San Francisco,
24-26 March 2003
(5th classification) Modelling MAS for KM
- Top-down approach model interactions
- Bottom-up approach build the mechanism and
see what happens   Time is a determinant factor
as it influences other factors (time to make
decisions, time to learn)   We have concluded
noticing that there are very few significant
examples of validation of KM systems in industry.
Nevertheless we are optimist, as we know that
KM is very important to organizations in the near
future.