Consensus Software: Robustness and Social Good via Widespread Multiagent Development

This paper describes two complementary research thrusts: (1) it investigates how software robustness can be achieved pragmatically through the use of large-scale multiagent systems, and (2) it investigates how a broader spectrum of people can contribute to the production and customization of software, also through the use of multiagent systems. The paper first hypothesizes that robust software can be achieved through redundancy, where the redundancy is achieved by agents that have different algorithms but similar responsibilities. The agents are produced by wrapping conventional algorithms with a minimal set of agent capabilities, which we specify. We describe our initial experiments in verifying our hypothesis and present results that show an improvement in robustness due to redundancy. We then advance the hypothesis that the redundant algorithms can be obtained through the efforts of many people outside of the traditional software development community. To be successful, such widespread development will require tools, an infrastructure, and a means for semantic reconciliation, and we investigate the characteristics and requirements for these. The paper analyzes the relationship between the software systems that manage and control societal institutions and the members of the society. The result enables individuals to participate more directly in the behavior of their governing institutions.