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86 Socially Intelligent Agentsthe human perception of intelligence. The comparison of computers’ socialityto the human one is sharp - one can see that humans are able to get involved invery complex behaviours when interacting, even when they have only a minimalamount of conscious data about the others.If the final aim is to engender some social intelligence in artificial agents, theusual approaches (e.g. trying to limit misunderstandings in the interpretation ofmessages exchanged or by reducing uncertainty in social organisation) mightnot be the best way forward. These approaches do not contradict that aim, infact they can be useful, but they will not be sufficient.2. Socially Intelligence In MASThe problem of organising interactions among computers has grown drasticallysince the spread of PCs to a wider public, and more precisely with theever-wider adoption of computer networks. The field of Multi-Agent Systemsthat has developed in the last years was originally led by the idea of havingseveral artificial intelligences accomplish tasks together. This is often seen asa continuation of both Artificial Intelligence and Distributed Artificial Intelligence,and researchers usually look for ways of building societies of artificialintelligences [12].There exists a commonly accepted definition of a MAS: it is constituted ofan environment that evolves in time in which autonomous entities (agents) areable to act; they can also interact; the overall organisation is effected by rulesthat coordinate time evolution and all actions of the entities. Four axes can thusbe emphasised for such a systems, (called the AEIO model): the explorationof what an Agent should be (mainly in terms of cognition and perception),what characteristics the Environment has, which kind of Interactions can existbetween the entities, and what kind of Organisation is needed to put thesedifferent elements together [2].The reasons why people use MAS are diverse. Some need to coordinatecomputers, as in networks, some need to coherently integrate different expertsystems, and some need to make robots act together. In most cases, it is commonto consider that the reliability of the system, its predictability and its efficiencyare what is most important. In order to coordinate agents so that they worktogether without interfering with each other it is common to use a set of norms.In that case agents have clear roles that are interdependent and a known setof acquaintances with complementary roles (for example [5]. In this case,communication is mainly used by agents to make requests for help and toaccept tasks that are proposed to them. Since tasks are necessarily thought ascollective, the social life of agents is very important for the global system. Theyare thus designed with this ability to interact, either by being committed to others