Position Paper: Ensemble Engineer- Ing and Emergence (and Ethics?) Position Paper: Ensemble Engineer- Ing and Emergence (and Ethics?)

The complex systems lying at the heart of ensemble engineering exhibit—and are perhaps even characterised by—emergent behaviour: behaviour that is not explicitly derived from the functional description of the components of the ensemble at the level of abstraction at which they are provided. A typical example from Artificial Life comprises an ensemble consisting of a flock of birds; the components are the individual birds, thought of autonomously, and the emergent behaviour is that of the flock. Emergent behaviour can be understood by expanding the level of abstraction of description of the components to augment their functional behaviour; but that is infeasible in specifying ensembles of realistic size (although it is the main implementation method) since it amounts to consideration of an entire implementation. An alternative must be taken. (continued next page)