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Research Report CS-RR-314

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I.D. Craig, Multi-Agent Systems: A Risk to Freedom (September 1, 1996).

Abstract

Multi-agent systems are being proposed for a number of contexts where autonomous agents are required to act in concert with other agents and with other software in order to perform certain tasks. For example, it has been proposed that autonomous software agents be employed to gather information from the Internet: these agents would acess databases and bulletin boards, collecting information that is of potential relevence and sending to other agents who determine its true relevance. There is a clear sense in which agents can be used to restrict civil liberties: one can forsee, for example, agents being used in surveillance of citizens, particularly when television, telephone and computer are connected. Given the increasingly computerised nature of the world and the increasing number of networked systems, such information gathering becomes a real possibility. There are the possibilities for restricting freedom of movement, freedom of choice, freedom of thought. It becomes possible for an unscrupulous agency to tamper with records with the effect that one simply disappears - literally becomes a non-person.

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