Anupam Joshi University of Maryland, Baltimore County Joint work with Tim Finin and several students Computational/Declarative Policies

An early declarative policy 1 A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. 2 A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law. 3 A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law. -- Handbook of Robotics, 56th Edition, 2058 A.D.

On policies, rules and laws The interesting thing about Asimov’s laws were that robots did not always strictly follow them. This is a point of departure from more traditional “hard coded” rules like DB access control, and OS file permissions For autonomous agents, we need policies that describe “norms of behavior” that they should follow to be good citizens. So, it’s natural to worry about issues like – When an agent is governed by multiple policies, how does it resolve conflicts among them? – How can we define penalties when agents don’t fulfill their obligations? – How can we relate notions of trust and reputation to policies?

What’s a Declarative Policy? In computing contexts, a policy is a set of rules or constraints governing what to do in a situation Procedural policies are often written as code (e.g., if X do Y else do Z) and trigger actions Declarative policies are often written as logical constraints on a (requested) action and decide whether it is permitted, prohibited or required Access control mechanisms in an OS or DB are examples of declarative policies 4/46

General approach A declarative policy describes a system’s actions or behavior “Describes” can be – Specifies: whenever X, do Y – Constrains: doing X is permitted – Advises: whenever X, doing Y is preferred to doing Z Public policies and common policies foster interoperability and cooperation – Languages based on semantic web technologies

The Role of Ontologies We will require shared ontologies to support this framework A common ontology to represent basic concepts: agents, actions, permissions, obligations, prohibitions, delegations, credentials, etc. Appropriate shared ontologies to describe classes, properties and roles of people and agents, e.g., – “any device owned by Don Norris” – “any request from a faculty member at UMBC” Ontologies to encode policy rules

Need to Know, Need to Share Traditional information security frame-works are based on “need to know” Unless you can prove that you have a pre-arranged right to access this information, you can’t have it The 9/11 commission recommended moving from this to “need to share” I think this information may be important for you to accomplish your mission and would like to share it with you Need to share modulated by context!

Required Capabilities Semantic Interoperability Unknown principals Context Speech acts and negotiation Adjustable privacy Usage control, enforcement, accountability Explanations and provenance Ramifications

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