Human Agent Collectives

In the  CACM:  More simply put, it's about people and their tools. Now smart tools that are getting smarter. And unexpectedly, new forms of autonomy are emerging too. A lengthy and interesting piece on the topic.

" ... We call this emerging class of systems human-agent collectives (HACs) to reflect the close partnership and the flexible social interactions between the humans and the computers. As well as exhibiting increased autonomy, such systems are inherently open and social. This openness means participants need to continually and flexibly establish and manage a range of social relationships. Thus, depending on the task at hand, different constellations of people, resources, and information must come together, operate in a coordinated fashion, and then disband. .... " 

Update: A video on HAC's.  Interesting in the video is a mention of the use of levels of autonomy for the Cogs being used, in the form of exploratory drones for disaster response.  Also the use of emotion classification for interaction with humans on site.   Useful for guiding any Cog-Human interaction scenarios. Reminds me of the Behavior Modeling services being provided today in Watson .  All this is then combined in a simulation game.  Useful components in any complex, predictive scenario system.