The most prevalent distributed systems today involve people and their personal devices, such as smartphones. In these systems, computations are driven by human volitions: for instance, triggering a payment when a person wishes to pay or initiating a friendship when two individuals want to connect. Volition-Guarded Multiagent Atomic Transactions have been proposed as an abstract specification language for such systems, where each agent comprises a person and their machine, and a transaction can be guarded by both the machine states and the personal volitions of the participating agents.
This paper defines the programming language volition-guarded GLP (vGLP), which extends GLP with volition-guarded clauses, and establishes its operational semantics as an instance of Communicating Volitional Agents. Since the semantics requires a person to will a volition-guarded clause reduction, a correct implementation must elicit the person's volitions: discovering "what's in the person's head" is the sole rationale for the UI, which is realized through standard constructs.
We demonstrate this approach on grassroots social graphs, social networks, and currencies: each platform is a vGLP program generated by AI from volition-guarded multiagent atomic transactions; the implementation of vGLP, also created by AI, then maps its volition-guarded clauses into user-interface constructs, resulting in a single functioning app deployed on a physical smartphone.
Blogger's Review: This paper explores the integration of human volition with machine operations, providing a novel perspective on human-computer interaction. By introducing mechanisms for volition-guarding, it better reflects user needs and enhances user experience, offering broad application potential. Particularly in the contexts of social networks and smart devices, this method may lead the way for future technological advancements.