C-MAS 2024: The Second International Workshop on Citizen-Centric Multiagent Systems 

Join us for the C-MAS 2024 workshop, where we will delve into the realm of citizen-centric multiagent systems. In today's world, large-scale AI systems hold the potential to tackle critical societal challenges, from decarbonising our energy system to facilitating on-demand mobility and improving disaster response. However, we often overlook the active role of citizen end users, treating them merely as data providers and service consumers. Our workshop aims to shift this perspective and explore innovative approaches that treat citizen end users as primary agents with diverse needs and preferences. By doing so, we can develop more trustworthy, fair, and widely accepted sociotechnical solutions to pressing societal challenges.

During C-MAS 2024, we will leverage the extensive research in multiagent systems to model, design, and reason about complex systems comprising interacting self-interested agents. This includes citizen end users, service providers, governmental bodies, and other stakeholders. Furthermore, we will incorporate cutting-edge techniques from trustworthy AI, focusing on fairness promotion and explainability enhancement.

Call for Papers

C-MAS 2024: The Second International Workshop on Citizen-Centric Multiagent Systems 

Large-scale AI systems promise to address important societal challenges, such as decarbonising our energy system, transitioning to on-demand mobility or responding effectively to disasters. However, citizen end users are often seen as peripheral to these systems, assumed to be passively providing data and consuming services. The goal of this workshop is to explore alternative approaches that treat citizen end users as first-class agents with diverse needs and preferences, thus enabling more trustworthy, fairer and potentially more widely accepted sociotechnical solutions to pressing societal challenges. The workshop will draw on the substantial body of work within multiagent systems on how to model, design and reason about complex systems of interacting self-interested agents, which may include citizen end users, service providers, governmental bodies and other stakeholders. It will also build on emerging techniques from human-centred AI to promote fairness and to enable explainability.  

More specifically, some of the key open technical issues in enabling citizen-centric multiagent systems (C-MAS) include:  

• Preference Learning: How to learn the needs and preferences of citizens? How to do this with sparse observations and limited interactions? How to preserve user privacy? How to aggregate preferences?  

• Incentive Design: How to minimise strategic behaviour and scope for manipulation by all stakeholders? How to offer incentives for behaviour change in a transparent and socially acceptable manner?  

• Fairness: How to ensure the C-MAS leads to fair and equitable decisions? How to monitor and minimise bias? How to trade off social, economic and environmental objectives within a C-MAS?  

• Explainability and Feedback: How to explain decisions to citizens? How to involve all stakeholders in gathering feedback, co-designing and monitoring the operation of a C-MAS?  

The workshop is closely related to topics discussed at AAMAS, but with a focus on human-centred approaches. In particular, we encourage submissions using a wide range of MAS techniques, including (but not limited to):  

• Agent-based modelling and simulation  

• Game theory and mechanism design, including game-theoretical analysis of C-MAS  

• Preference elicitation and negotiation, Preference aggregation and computational social choice  

• Formal methods and norms in C-MAS  

• Multiagent reinforcement learning (MARL) and interactive reinforcement learning  

• Human-in-the loop approaches, human-AI teaming  

• Novel deep learning approaches for single- and multiagent systems  

• Multi-objective optimisation (both quantitative and qualitative) for C-MAS  

• Evaluation of agents in the context of C-MAS  

• Cooperative exploration and learning to cooperate and collaborate in C-MAS   

• Learning trust and reputation for C-MAS  

• Scaling learning techniques to large systems of C-MAS  

• Bio-inspired C-MAS  

• Explainable and responsible AI for C-MAS  

• Interdisciplinary approaches 

We also encourage submissions that look at applications of C-MAS to complex real-world problems. These might include domains such as the following (but also many more):  

• Smart transportation in urban and rural areas   

• Uses of AI systems in smart energy   

• Disaster response   

• AI in the healthcare domain  

This workshop will be relevant for researchers, both in industry and academia, whose research affects and involves citizen end users.    

For more information, please contact the organising team.

Submission and important dates 

Participants are invited to submit a short paper (4-6 pages, plus one page for references, Springer LNCS format) describing their work on one or more of the topics relevant to the workshop. Your paper should include a title as well as all authors and affiliations. It should articulate the objectives of the paper and provide a brief, but thorough description of the research related to the theme of the workshop. Optionally, you may include an appendix that does not count towards the page limit. We encourage both mature research and work in progress. Accepted papers will be invited to submit a camera-ready version to be included in the open access pre-proceedings. All submissions to the workshop will be reviewed by the organising committee and the program committee, with at least two independent reviews per paper.  

Authors are requested to prepare their submissions by following the LNCS Springer format, preferably using the LaTeX template provided, but an MS Word template is also available.  

All papers must be submitted through the workshop's EasyChair page: https://easychair.org/...  

Important dates [tentative]: 

• 30 January 2024: Deadline for paper submissions (23:59 Anywhere on Earth)

• 13 March 2024: Notification of acceptance following the review process 

• 15 April 2024: Deadline for submitting camera-ready papers for inclusion in the pre-proceedings 

• 6 or 7 May 2024: C-MAS workshop (in-person only)  

• Following the workshop: Invitation for full papers 

Proceedings and special issue

All accepted short papers will be made available in the pre-proceedings. Please note that at least one author must register for the workshop in order for a paper to appear in the workshop’s pre-proceedings. After the conference all presenters will be invited to submit a full paper for the C-MAS2024 proceedings to appear as a special issue in a related journal (tbc).