Re: Agent Sub-Types

Hi Reza:

You raise an interesting topic, albeit a tough one.

Trust tends not to be binary, it comes in all shades of grey (e.g., a  
degree of confidence).

It is also subjective, the level of trust may depend on the  
application, the domain, or the use of the provenance.

So in my opinion, the core of a provenance representation should not  
include a representation of trust.  Maybe later we include an  
extension to represent trust, but note that many trust metrics can be  
derived from a given provenance record.

I am also not sure about your second category.  I am not sure if the  
NYT as publisher of an article would be considered "user-agent" or  
"system".  I am not sure if my personal email agent should be  
considered "system" or "user-agent".

In general, I think ontologizing agency is tricky.

In my opinion, the notion of agent should be eliminated from the model  
unless we want to attach a special meaning to a participant which is a  
meaning of responsibility for a step/process.

Yolanda



On Jul 14, 2011, at 10:18 AM, Reza B'Far wrote:

> Creating new thread to put agent sub-typing up for discussion.
>
> Proposal is to have the following sub-types of agent
> Trust-based sub-types
> Trusted Agent
> Untrusted Agent
> Limiting the scope of System vs. Human interaction
> User-Agent
> Alternative to 2, we could also do Automated System Agent and Human  
> Agent.
>
> Reza