Autonomy is an often cited but rarely agreed upon agent characteristic. Although no definition of agent autonomy is universally accepted, exploring the concept of autonomy is important because autonomy influences and is influenced by the degree of trust that agent designers and users place in their agents, the effectiveness of agent-based problem solving, and the organizational structure of age...

As intelligent systems are increasingly making decisions that directly affect society, perhaps the most important upcoming research direction in AI is to rethink the ethical implications of their actions. Means are needed to integrate moral, societal and legal values with technological developments in AI, both during the design process as well as part of the deliberation algorithms employed by ...

Metrics for quantifying thermal comfort and energy consumption focus on the role of mechanical systems, not architecture. This paper proposes a new metric, "Thermal Autonomy," that links occupant comfort to climate, building fabric, and building operation. Thermal Autonomy measures how much of the available ambient energy resources a building can harness rather than how much fuel heating and co...

DOI 10.1024/1421-0185/a000156 Abstract. Autonomy-supportive and controlling styles of teaching are usually considered to be the opposite ends of a single continuum. An alternative view, however, is that individuals can perceive both styles simultaneously, which suggests that they are different constructs (Bartholomew, Ntoumanis, Ryan, Bosch, & Thøgersen-Ntoumani, 2011). Using cluster analysis, ...