This article puts research on socially intelligent agents (SIA) in the broader context of how humans (and other primates) perceive and interact with the social world. Phylogenetic (evolutionary) and ontogenetic (developmental) issues are discussed with respect to the social origin of primate and human intelligence and human culture. Implications for designing artifacts and for the evolvability of human societies are outlined. A theory of empathy is presented that is based on current research on the primate social brain. Research projects that investigate some of these issues are reviewed. I argue that Socially Intelligent Agents (SIA) research, although strongly linked to software and robotic engineering, goes beyond a software engineering paradigm: it can potentially serve as a paradigm for a science of social minds. A systematic and experimental investigation of human social minds and the way humans perceive the social world can result in truly social artifacts,...

This article discusses narrative intelligence in the context of the evolution of primate (social) intelligence, and with respect to the particular cognitive limits that constrain the development of human social networks and societies.

In this paper, we introduce an ongoing research project, which aims at developing an immersive storytelling environment. In such a system, which is inspired from the "Holodeck" device, human users will be able to interact with artificial actors through speech, while sharing the same physical environment. Once on the set, the users will be able to participate in story generation by influencing virtual actors or altering the common environment. An essential aspect is that user involvement will not have to be permanent, and that the users will be allowed to leave the set to watch the story unfold in their absence and to return at a later stage. We discuss some fundamental AI problems with which the implementation will be faced and relate them to narrative theories and models of storytelling. More specifically, we describe how users can interfere with the virtual actor's plans to influence story generation in terms of interaction 1.

This article addresses the evolution of primate cultures. The primate social eld and cognitive capacities necessary to deal with complex social dynamics are discussed. Possible prerequisites for cultural evolution in primate societies are suggested. It is shown that the concept of evolvability can also be applied outside the context of genetic evolution, i.e. the capacity for generating phenotypic variation is also valid in the realm of cultural evolution. Societies of Social Animals Swarm Intelligence: Social Insects Don't have Friends The term `societies' is generally applied both to human and other animal societies, including social insects. Social insects (e.g. termites, bees, ants) are very well studied and two important theoretical concepts are used to understand coordination in social insect societies, namely self-organization and stigmergy. Recently, models of swarm intelligence and their applications to problems like combinatorial optimization and routing in commu...

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