<p>Software agents that are autonomous, communicative, and possibly intelligent processes raise new questions for developers of distributed systems. Specifically, what is responsible agent behavior, and who, as the owner, is legally responsible for it? The answers involve an understanding of human-agent interaction, agent-oriented middleware, and social behavior.</p>

Ebrahim (Abe) Mamdani, Jeremy Pitt, "Responsible Agent Behavior: A Distributed Computing Perspective", IEEE Internet Computing, vol. 4, no. , pp. 27-31, September/October 2000, doi:10.1109/4236.877483