Biography
Michael J. Prietula (PhD, MPH) is Professor in the Goizueta Business School and in the Rollins School of Public Health. Dr. Prietula holds a PhD in Information Systems (minors in Computer Science and Psychology) from the University of Minnesota, and a Master of Public Health (MPH) from the University of Florida. He has worked as a research scientist at Honeywell's Aerospace Systems & Research Center, on the faculties of Dartmouth College, Carnegie Mellon University, and department chair at the Johns Hopkins University with an adjunct appointment in the JHU School of Medicine. He is also an External Research Scholar at the Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition, that develops pioneering technologies aimed at leveraging and extending human capabilities via Artificial Intelligence & Robotics.
He has published such journals as the Management Science, Information Systems Research, MIS Quarterly, Cognitive Science, Harvard Business Review, Organization Science, Biosecurity & Bioterrorism, Journal of Experimental & Theoretical Artificial Intelligence, ORSA Journal on Computing, Applied Artificial Intelligence, JMIR mHealth & uHealth, Human Factors, Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, Computers in Human Behavior, PLoS One, Brain Connectivity, and the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. He has best paper awards from the Hawaii International Conference of Systems Sciences, the International Conference on Global Defense & Business Continuity, the International Conference of Information Systems, and the Academy of Management. His papers were in the top 5 downloaded from Organization Science (2014), the most downloaded paper from Brain Connectivity (2017), and in top 10 downloaded from JMIR mHealth & uHealth (2016-2019). He has edited two books, Computational Organization Theory (with K. Carley) and Simulating Organizations: Computational Models of Institutions and Groups (with K. Carley & L. Gasser). He has been funded by Emory's Global Health Institute, the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention, the National Science Foundation, the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, the Office of Naval Research, and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. Michael is a musician, a PADI diving instructor, and was also a stage manager and served on the board of directors for a community theatre in New Hampshire while teaching at Dartmouth.
Education
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PhD in Information SystemsUniversity of Minnesota
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MPH in Public HealthUniversity of Florida
Advice in Crisis: Principles of Organizational and Entrepreneurial Resilience
Journal of Organizational Design
S Levine, M Prietula, A Majchrzak
February 27, 2023
How does (in)accurate information flow in a crisis? When facing a crisis (or preparing for one), decision-makers often turn to peer networks, seeking advice and providing it. Scholars and executives endorse sharing knowledge and experience, especially for boosting resilience and combating crises.They believe such decentralized, peer-to-peer contact suits the ill-structured challenges organizations encounter. Yet, this endorsement overlooks a bias known as the Dunning-Kruger effect: People regularly misjudge their own and their peers’ skills. In this paper, we weave case studies and experimental evidence into a computational model examining the dynamic unfolding of information under varying assumptions, showing how organizational design can ameliorate risks of information biases. We conclude with implications for resilience, research, and practice. This research was funding in part by Goizueta's Summer Research Fund.
Using ADAPT-ITT to Modify a Telephone-Based HIV Prevention Intervention for SMS Delivery: Formative Study
JMIR Formative Research
T Davis T, RJ DiClemente RJ, M Prietula
June 10, 2020
African American adolescent females are disproportionately affected by sexually transmitted infections (STIs) and HIV. Collaborating with the Rollins School of Public Health, we demonstrated how to engage user-experience (UX) methods to design and adapt a post-intervention, Given the elevated risk of STIs and HIV in African American women, there is an urgent need to identify innovative strategies to enhance the adoption and maintenance of STI and HIV preventive behaviors. Even evidence-based interventions (workshops) lose their efficacy as time passes. Post-intervention phone calls by health educators extend the effectiveness, but the use of that technology is declining for that target population. Texting is now the promising technology for extending the efficacy of the original intervention. However, little guidance in the public health literature is available for developing this type of application. SMS texting platform for health educator contact. Using a representative advisory board, iterations through design revealed critical insight into cultural components, language, and key emergent personas to help cue health educators on their responses. This research was supported by a grant from Emory University’s Global Health Institute and the Goizueta Business School’s Summer Research Fund.
Taking mHealth Forward: Examining the Core Characteristics
JMIR MHealth and UHealth
T Davis T, RJ DiClemente, M Prietula
October 8, 2016
This is a review paper of the core characteristics of mobile health (mHealth). We assert that the relevance of these characteristics to mHealth will endure as the technology advances, so an understanding of these characteristics is essential to the design, implementation, and adoption of mHealth-based solutions. The core characteristics we discuss are (1) the penetration or adoption into populations, (2) the availability and form of apps, (3) the availability and form of wireless broadband access to the Internet, and (4) the tethering of the device to individuals. These collectively act to both enable and constrain the provision of population health in general, as well as personalized and precision individual health in particular. This work was funded in part by a grant from Emory University’s Global Health Institute.
The price of your soul: neural evidence for the non-utilitarian representation of sacred values
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B
G Berns, E Bell, M Capra, M Prietula, S Moore, B Anderson, J Ginges, S Atran S
March 5, 2012
How sacred are your values? This is the first paper that provides empirical neurobiological evidence that sacred values affect behaviour by retrieving and processing deontic rules and not through a utilitarian evaluation of costs and benefits. Sacred values, such as those associated with religious, political, or ethnic identity, underlie many important individual and group decisions in life. Individuals typically resist attempts to trade off their sacred values, even for material benefits. However, little is known about the neural representation and processing of sacred values. Our results explain why argument often fails to alter belief. Truly sacred values “short circuit” subsequent choice assessment of conditions and engage regions associated with increased activity in the left temporoparietal junction and ventrolateral prefrontal cortex, regions previously associated with semantic rule retrieval. Philosophical Transactions is the world’s first and longest-running scientific journal. This research was supported by grants from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR) through the Office of Naval Research (ONR).
The Conforming Brain and Deontological Resolve
PLOS ONE
M Pincus, L LaViers, M Prietula, G Berns
August 29, 2014
Are your personal identity and sacred values subject to forces of social influence? This is the first paper to discover a neurobiological metric for deontological resolve. Such forces include core religious beliefs and moral norms that constrain decision-making across a person’s lifetime. In many cultures, violating sacred values is tantamount to disavowing group membership, underscoring the importance of sacred values to group identity. But what is going on in our brain when we are faced with choices where our beliefs go against “the group”? Deontological resolve defines how strongly one relies on absolute rules of right and wrong in the representation of one’s personal values, and the willingness to modify/deny one’s values in the presence of social influence. Using fMRI, we found that the relative activity in the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (VLPFC) during the passive processing of sacred values predicted individual differences in conformity. Individuals with stronger deontological resolve, as measured by greater VLPFC activity, displayed lower levels of conformity. We conclude that unwillingness to conform to others' values is associated with a strong neurobiological representation of social rules. This research was supported by the Office of Naval Research (ONR) and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).
Short-and long-term effects of a novel on connectivity in the brain
Brain Connectivity
G Berns, K Blaine, M Prietula, B Pye
December 9, 2013
How does reading a novel change your brain? Our paper reveals the first evidence of how reading a novel alters the resting state of the brain over time. Novels are stories, and stories are complicated objects of communication. Although several linguistic and literary theories describe what constitutes a story, neurobiological research has just begun to elucidate brain networks that are active when processing stories. To date, these studies have focused on the immediate response to short stories. We chose a novel over a short story because the length and depth of the novel would afford a set of repeated engagements with associated, unique stimuli (sections of the novel) set in a broader, controlled stimulus context that could be consumed between several fMRI scanning periods. We identified three independent networks that had significant increases in activity. Two of these networks involved brain regions previously associated with perspective-taking and story comprehension. These hubs corresponded to regions previously associated with perspective-taking and story comprehension, and the changes exhibited a time course that decayed rapidly after the completion of the novel. A third network showed long-term changes in connectivity, which persisted for several days after the reading. This was observed in the bilateral somatosensory cortex, suggesting a potential mechanism for “embodied semantics” to suggest that reading a novel invokes neural activity associated with bodily sensations. This project was funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).
Open collaboration for innovation: principles and performance
Organization Science
S Levine, M Prietula
December 30, 2014
The principles of open collaboration for innovation (and production), once distinctive to open source software, are now found in many other ventures. Some of these ventures are Internet based: for example, Wikipedia and online communities. Others are off-line: they are found in medicine, science, and everyday life. Such ventures have been affecting traditional firms and may represent a new organizational form. Despite the impact of such ventures, their operating principles and performance are not well understood. Here we define open collaboration (OC), the underlying set of principles, and propose that it is a robust engine for innovation and production. In all instances, participants create goods and services of economic value, they exchange and reuse each other’s work, they labor purposefully with just loose coordination, and they permit anyone to contribute and consume. These principles distinguish OC from other organizational forms, such as firms or cooperatives. We identify and investigate three elements that affect performance: the cooperativeness of participants, the diversity of their needs, and the degree to which the goods are rival (subtractable). Through computational experiments, we find that OC performs well even in seemingly harsh environments: when cooperators are a minority, free riders are present, diversity is lacking, or goods are rival. We conclude that OC is viable and likely to expand into new domains. The findings also inform the discussion on new organizational forms, collaborative and communal. This project was supported by a summer Research grant from the Goizueta Business School, Emory University, and discussions at the Human Social, Culture and Behavior Modeling Program meetings of the Office of Naval Research (ONR).
How knowledge transfer impacts performance: A multilevel model of benefits and liabilities
Organization Science
S Levine, M Prietula
September 28, 2012
When does knowledge transfer benefit performance? Combining field data from a global consulting firm with an agent-based model, we examine how efforts to supplement one’s knowledge from coworkers interact with individual, organizational, and environmental characteristics to impact organizational performance. We find that once cost and interpersonal exchange are included in the analysis, the impact of knowledge transfer is highly contingent. Depending on specific characteristics and circumstances, knowledge transfer can better, matter little to, or even harm performance. Three illustrative studies clarify puzzling past results and offer specific boundary conditions: (1) At the individual level, better organizational support for employee learning diminishes the benefit of knowledge transfer for organizational performance. (2) At the organization level, broader access to organizational memory makes global knowledge transfer less beneficial to performance. (3) When the organizational environment becomes more turbulent, the organizational performance benefits of knowledge transfer decrease. The findings imply that organizations may forgo investments in both organizational memory and knowledge exchange, that wide-ranging knowledge exchange may be unimportant or even harmful for performance, and that organizations operating in turbulent environments may find that investment in knowledge exchange undermines performance rather than enhances it. At a time when practitioners are urged to make investments in facilitating knowledge transfer and collaboration, appreciation of the complex relationship between knowledge transfer and performance will help in reaping benefits while avoiding liabilities. This research was supported, in part, by a Summer Research grant from the Goizueta Business School, Emory University, discussions at the Human Social, Culture and Behavior Modeling Program meetings of the Office of Naval Research (ONR).
Historical Roots of the A Behavioral Theory of the Firm Model at GSIA.
Organization Science
M Augier, M Prietula
June 1, 2007
Richard Cyert and James March’s (1963) A Behavioral Theory of the Firm (ABTOF) is one of the most influential works in organization science. An important element of that work was a computational model of a duopoly, which was arguably the first computational model that instantiated organizational constructs within a substantial theoretical framework. We suggest that the academic environment within which this theory and model grew was instrumental in its emergence. Furthermore, an examination of the model itself (by triangulating on the verbal descriptions, the flow charts, and the code) reveals innovative embodiments of organizational attention, organizational learning, organizational memory, routines, metaroutines, aspiration level adjustments, and computational experiments. In this paper, we examine the historical roots of the model—the concepts, culture, and characters at Carnegie Tech and the Graduate School of Industrial Administration (GSIA). Although causality is difficult to assess historically, we suggest the significance of a strong research-based, interdisciplinary culture at a time when innovative (and often computational) concepts and theories were emerging within the contexts of computer science, economics, and psychology. A shorter version of this paper won the John F. Mee Award for Management History from the Academy of Management. This project was funded in part by the Carnegie Bosch institute of Carnegie Mellon University.
The Making of an Expert
Harvard Business Review
K Ericsson, M Prietula, M, E Cokely
July 1, 2007
Popular lore tells us that genius is born, not made. Scientific research, on the other hand, reveals that true expertise is mainly the product of years of intense practice and dedicated coaching. We studied data on the behavior of experts gathered by more than 100 scientists. Ordinary practice is not enough: To reach elite levels of performance, you need to constantly push yourself beyond your abilities and comfort level. Such discipline is the key to becoming an expert in all domains, including management and leadership. What consistently distinguished elite surgeons, chess players, writers, athletes, pianists, and other experts was the habit of engaging in "deliberate" practice--a sustained focus on tasks that they couldn't do before. Experts continually analyzed what they did wrong, adjusted their techniques, and worked arduously to correct their errors. Even such traits as charisma can be developed using this technique. For example, the authors describe such an approach applying specific techniques of drama enhanced executives' powers of presence and persuasion. Through deliberate practice, leaders can improve their ability to win over their employees, their peers, or their board of directors. The journey to elite performance is not for the impatient or the faint of heart. For some types of eliteness, it takes at least a decade and requires the guidance of an expert teacher to provide tough, often painful feedback. It also demands would-be experts to develop their "inner coach" and eventually drive their own progress. However, such methods engaged to acquire expertise can (and should be) applied to skill improvement on most any level. This HBR paper has estimated views now exceeding 600,000. This research was funding in part by Goizueta's Summer Research Fund.
The Experts in your Midst
Harvard Business Review
M Prietula, J Simon
June 28, 1989
This is an early paper I did with Herb Simon based on AI models of expertise I was examining. One was a project I did in Mark Fox's robotic lab, where we analyzed how expert scheduler's performed their task and built an intelligent assistant based on their methods (ergo the "psychology of pscheduling" reference). Another was refining the concept of "intuition" that was based on a model expertise working with Allen Newell based on the Soar AI computational architecture applied to scheduling expertise. This research was funding in part by Goizueta's Summer Research Fund.
Situational Uses of Syndromic Surveillance
Biosecurity and Bioterrorism: Biodefense Strategy, Practice, and Science
J Buehler, E Whitney, D Smith, M Prietula, S Stanton, A Isakov
November 1, 2009
We conducted case studies of selected events with actual or potential public health impacts to determine whether and how health departments and hospitals used automatic systems to promptly identify public healthcare threats. We interviewed public health and hospital representatives and applied qualitative analysis methods to identify response themes. So-called ‘‘syndromic’’ surveillance methods were most useful in situations with widespread health effects, such as respiratory illness associated with seasonal influenza, exposures to smoke from wildfires, or potential pathogens in air samples. Typically, these data supplemented information from traditional sources to provide a timelier or fuller mosaic of community health status, and use was shaped by long-standing contacts between health department and hospital staffs. State or local epidemiologists generally preferred syndromic systems they had developed over the CDC BioSense system, citing lesser familiarity with BioSense and less engagement in its development. Instances when BioSense data were most useful to state officials occurred when analyses and reports were provided by CDC staff. Understanding the uses of surveillance information during such events can inform further investments in surveillance capacity in public health emergency preparedness programs. This project was supported by the National Center for Public Health Informatics of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention under the BioSense Utility cooperative agreement.
CASA, WASA, and the Dimensions of US
Computers in Human Behavior
P Karr-Wisniewski, M Prietula
January 1, 2010
Do people treat websites as if they were human social actors? Evidence has repeatedly shown that when interacting with computers, people treat computers with typical human social norms – computers are social actors (CASA). We conducted the first research demonstrating that websites are also social actors (WASA) and that WASA dominates CASA. We retest the CASA paradigm and find that our new hypothesis – Websites are Social Actors (WASA) reduces the CASA effect in contexts where individuals form a social attachment to websites instead of computers. If individuals were at the same computer, the most polite (same website) and least polite (other website) scores were obtained. Our exploratory factor analysis generated the same results from a reduced Politeness scale of their original 14 items, but also generated two specific underlying constructs highly related to emerging research describing how humans automatically engage in social evaluation: Helpful (Competence) and Enjoyable (Warmth). We find evidence that suggests humans can exhibit politeness toward websites and literally (not virtually) treat them as social actors. The results are consistent with research in [human] social cognition and suggest that the politeness construct may be tapping similar and fundamental components of how humans engage with others in their social world – the enduring two dimensions of warmth and competence – that we see emerging in AI-human engagements today.
SimEOC: A Distributed Web-Based Virtual Emergency Operations Center Simulator for Training and Research
International Journal of Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management
C Nikolai, T Johnson, M Prietula, I Becerra-Fernandez, G Madey,
March 31, 2015
Training is an integral part of disaster preparedness. Practice in dealing with crises improves one’s ability to manage emergency situations. As an emergency escalates, more and more agencies get involved, many of whom would not normally work together. These agencies require critical training to learn how to manage the crisis and to work together across jurisdictional boundaries. In many jurisdictions, training is conducted through discussion-based tabletop and paper-based scenario performance exercises or generic forms of computer-based exercises. In this paper, we describe a socio-technical computer-based training simulator and research tool for upper-level emergency managers. This tool is important because it enables emergency managers to configure the simulation to fit their emergency operations form. This allows training for crises more efficiently and effectively in a virtual environment. It also serves as a research tool for scientists to study emergency management decision-making, infrastructural design, and organizational learning. This research was funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF).
Design Principles for Crisis Information Systems
International Journal of Information Systems for Crisis Management
C Nikolai, T Johnson, I Becerra-Fernandez, M Prietula, G Madey
January 1, 2015
Since Hurricane Katrina, research has focused on improving disaster management through the use of specially designed crisis information systems (CIS). However, there are few design principles specific to these dynamic environments. Toward that end, we engaged in a 9-month project studying one of the most respected emergency response organizations in the world -- the Miami-Dade Emergency Operations Center in Miami-Dade County, Florida. Here we report key principles of design that apply to these critical information systems. This work was supported by the University of Notre Dame, Emory University, the U.S. Department of Education (DOE), and the National Science Foundation (NSF).
Applying an Architecture for General Intelligence to Reduce Scheduling Effort
ORSA Journal on Computing
M Prietula, W-L Hsu, D Steier, A Newell
June 7, 2023
Merle-Soar is based on an AI architecture for general intelligence and learning (Soar) to demonstrate how scheduling effort can be reduced when solving scheduling problems. In particular, we describe how Merle-Soar schedules sequences of jobs on a single bottleneck machine in a Job shop. The knowledge of dispatching, acquired from examining how a human expert performs the task, is cast as search rules. A study examined the contribution of learning within tasks by the change in reasoning effort as knowledge is accumulated from successive trials. The results indicated that dramatic reductions in scheduling effort (in terms of the architecture) were obtained. Knowledge gained early in the scheduling task was subsequently applied later in the task to reduce deliberation, and knowledge gained from one trial successfully reduced deliberation effort in subsequent trials. Additionally, the reduction exhibited the general power law of learning documented in psychological studies of skill acquisition. This work was supported, in part, by a Faculty Development Grant from Carnegie Mellon University, by the Engineering Design Research Center at Carnegie Mellon University, the Center for the Management of Technology at GSIA/CMU, and by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DOD).
Studies of Expertise from Psychological Perspectives: Historical Foundations and Recurrent Themes
Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance, 2nd Edition [Book chapter]
P Feltovich, M Prietula, A Ericsson
May 31, 2018
This chapter reviews an influential historical research period roughly from the mid-1950s to the 1980s when empirical laboratory studies of expert reasoning were first combined with theoretical models of human thought processes that could reproduce observable performance. It characterizes some of the enduring insights about mechanisms and aspects of expertise that generalize across domains, reflecting on the original theoretical accounts. There were three primary roots that play an essential role in the field of expertise: artificial intelligence (AI), cognitive psychology, and education. The first AI program, called the logic theorist, was written in the early years. Cognitive Psychology and Computer Science merged into a close collaboration named Cognitive Science. Expert cognition was conceived as the "goal state" for education, the criterion for what the successful educational process should produce, and a measure to assess its progress. This informed both pedagogical design and teacher evaluation. Knowledge is viewed as the primary source of difference associated with expertise, so this influenced the emerence of the "expert systems" apporach to artificial intelligence. This work was supported by a Goizueta summer research grant.
Gossip matters: Destabilization of an organization by injecting suspicion
Information Warfare and Organizational Decision Making [Book chapter]
M Prietula, K Carley
June 7, 2023
We examine how Internet-based groups can be disrupted through loss of trust via deception. The accuracy of the information flowing in groups is critical to its ability to function. Even modest increases in the error rate generated in one node can induce a profound, far-ranging performance degradation. However, another characteristic of information flow can be at least as critical -- trustworthiness. One universal form of calibrating trust in information exchange is gossip. We explore the theory and evidence of gossip, and how that impacts veiled groups that form to exchange information anonymously. Through agent-based models, we demonstrate that gossip is dysfunctional not because agents are “wasting time” gossiping but its existence can reduce the flow of any information. However, gossip can be functional to “isolate, prune, and tune” by spreading information on the viability of less reliable components. Thus, gossip as an original cultural learning mechanism can be exploited as a form of organizational learning. This research was funded in part through an NSF Computer and Information Sciences, Information and Intelligent Systems Award.
Examining the Feasibility of a Case-Based Reasoning Model for Software Effort Estimation
MIS Quarterly
S Vicinanza, T Mukhopadhyay, M Prietula
June 7, 2023
Existing algorithmic models fail to produce accurate software development effort estimates. To address this problem, a case-based reasoning artificial intelligence model, called Estor, was developed based on the verbal protocols of a human expert solving a set of estimation problems. Estor was then presented with 15 software effort estimation tasks. The estimates of Estor were compared to those of the expert as well as those of the function point and COCOMO estimations of the projects. The estimates generated by the human expert and Estor were more accurate and consistent than those of the function point and COCOMO methods. In fact, Estor was nearly as accurate and consistent as the expert. These results suggest that a case-based reasoning approach for software effort estimation holds promise and merits additional research.
The Turing Effect: The nature of trust in expert systems advice
Expertise in Context [Book chapter]
J Lerch, M Prietula, C Kulik
June 7, 2023
Alan Turing's classic 1950 test explored whether a judge could discern if typed exchanges were with a computer or a human. Here we take a slightly different approach. We define and describe the Turing Effect as the differential impact on trust judgments resulting from attributing advice to an AI system. In four experiments, we tell our participants the source of advice (AI, human expert, human novice) for a series of financial problems in simulated email. Participants reacted differently to AI sources of advice. Ratings of agreement (in the advice), confidence (in the source), and performance attributions (Stability: stable, unstable x Locus of Control: internal, external) were collected to assess associated underlying causality. Participants were less confident in AI than experts and rated effort as contributing less than the humans (i.e., AI cannot exert “effort”), but agreed more with the advice of the AI than with expert advice. Differences in trust can be exploited by specific attributions of the source. Explanations significantly affected agreement with the advice but did not affect confidence in the source. These results contradict claims made by designers that AI explanations can increase trust (i.e., dependability).
Thoughts on Complexity and Computational Models
The Sage Handbook of Complexity and Management [Book chapter]
M Prietula
June 7, 2023
What do we mean by ‘complexity’ when we discuss computational models of human organizations? An exact and particular answer to this question may not be straightforward. We see definitions of complexity ranging from informal articulations of ‘generic difficulty’ to the highly-constrained mathematical specification of specific and requisite properties. In Melanie Mitchell’s book, she concludes that ‘neither a single science of complexity nor a single theory of complexity exist yet’ and ‘many different measures of complexity have been proposed; however, none have been universally accepted by scientists’. Is this lack of convergence either essential or important for organizational researchers? Similar differences can be found for ‘complexity’ among (and within) the aforementioned example disciplines. Therefore, to begin adiscussion, it is necessary to provide a sufficient definition or description, whether operationally or otherwise, that accommodates a particular disciplinary context, so that interpretive differences in the use can be accurately discerned. And that is how that chapter begins…
The benefits and liabilitiesof interacting for innovation: A quantitative model
Smarter Innovation: Using Interactive Processes to Drive Better Business Results [Book chapter]
S Levine, T Gorman, M Prietula
June 7, 2023
We show corporate performance is affected by peer-to-peer sharing, instances when people supplement their knowledge by interacting with others. Popular wisdom holds that such interaction benefits performance unequivocally, but the authors find otherwise. Combining qualitative fieldwork – interviews, observation, and document analysis – with computational modeling, they show that sharing can benefit performance, matter little, or even harm it. The effect of sharing on performance depends on at least three variables (and likely more): the learning capacity of individuals in the organization, the state of organizational memory, and turbulence in the competitive environment. The findings suggest that the effects of interaction on innovation are neither pure nor simple.
Boundedly Rational and Emotional Agents: Cooperation, Trust, and Rumor
Proceedings of the American Association of Artificial Intelligence
MJ Prietula, KM Carley
June 7, 2023
Computer-based agents, in various forms, are becoming actively involved in our personal and professional decisions and deliberations. We interact with them; they interact with each other. In this paper, we describe a broad Model Social Agent study where we explore how a process model of boundedly-rational agents with emotion behave across increasingly social contexts and the impact of cooperation, trust, rumor, and deception within those contexts. We adapt a psychological Elicitation Theory (Ortony) to represent event-, attribution-, and object-based valenced emotions. We link that with the sociological Affect Control Theory (Heise) to define a set of adaptation equations that account for the dynamics of valence change in repeated multi-agent interactions regarding cooperation, rumor and trust consructs. We report the results of an initial set of agent-based simulations.
WebBots, Trust, and Organizational Science
Simulating organizations: Computational models of institutions and groups [Book chapter]
K Carley, M Prietula
June 7, 2023
Web Bots are artificial creatures, by which we mean they are created by us. Yet they are neither biological nor mechanical; they are usually a form of [distributed] computational agents. Web Bots take many forms, but their uniqueness is the environments within which they reside – webs of interconnected networks. Initially, they were simplistic and engaged in well-defined and restricted tasks. However, their structure, function, and responsibilities are escalating, operating as distributed intelligent agents working cooperatively to achieve goals. In this chapter, we present an architecture that can realize a specific type of Web Bot that can reason and communicate with other Web Bots. A central point of this chapter is exploring the social aspects of these AI Web Bots. We describe a computational experiment where we assign tasks to AI Web Bot agents, adjusting trust and forgiveness in their information exchanges. We conclude by discussing that it is essential to assimilate this technology into the corporate environment and that a foundation for defining AI Web Bot (organizational) science is now emerging.
ACTS theory: Extending the model of bounded rationality
Computational Organization Theory [Book chapter]
K Carley, M Prietula
June 7, 2023
Bounded rationality asserts that agents may be rational in intent, but less than rational in execution because of fundamental limits of cognition. This was to replace the model of agents upon which theories of economics and organizations were based. In this chapter we extend the original model of bounded rationality and incorporate a general process theory of organizations -- ACTS theory. In this theory, we view organizations as collections of intelligent agents who are cognitively restricted, task oriented, and socially situated. We present the arguments for the approach and articulate the assumptions axiomatically.