First Workshop on Agentic AI Systems, Welfare, Social Mechanisms, and Multi-Agent Ecosystems (AWESOME-2026)

First Workshop on Agentic AI Systems, Welfare, Social Mechanisms, and Multi-Agent Ecosystems (AWESOME-2026)

• Location: Bremen, Germany
• Deadline for submission: 8 June 2026
• Workshop: 11 August 2026
• Co-located with: 49th German Conference on Artificial Intelligence (KI 2026), August 11, 2026, Bremen, Germany

Aims and Scope

Agentic systems are evolving from being mere tools toward so-called agentic AI systems, i.e., systems that, at least from a behavioral point of view, can be attributed a form of agency and social abilities. Such agents do not only react; they also pursue goals, make autonomous decisions, and adapt their behavior to changes in the environment and to other agents.

A key question emerges: How should autonomous agents act in socio-technical environments, and how can such behavior be ensured? The shift from individual agents to advanced multi-agent systems, together with concrete examples, such as Moltbook, raises not only technical but also sociological, normative, and ethical issues: How should autonomous agents (inter-)act within human and institutional norms? What mechanisms ensure trust, transparency, and accountability? How do we design collective intelligence (e.g., with epistemic logic) that remains beneficial, is aligned with human values, and ensures societal welfare?

This workshop aims to provide an interdisciplinary forum to discuss technological advances, theoretical foundations, and the societal implications of agentic AI systems, considering perspectives of computer science, sociology, philosophy, and (behavioral) game theory.

Topics of Interest

We welcome papers on the following and any related topics:

Logics for agentic systems/agency

• Support for the modeling and verification of agent decision-making processes and agency and their preferences.
• Formal logic for transparent agent behavior.

Social Mechanisms, Social Epistemology, and Formal Ethics

• Mechanisms governing cooperation, coordination, and conflict resolution in agentic systems.
• Applications of social epistemology to distributed AI in order to, e.g., identify responsible knowledge experts, ensure fairness (w.r.t. knowledge distribution and access), or collective knowledge generation.
• Embedding agentic systems in societal institutions without undermining autonomy or democratic principles.
• Behavioral game theory.
• Formally well-founded approaches to AI alignment.
• Human-beneficial AI.

Humanities-Oriented Artificial Intelligence

• Transferring hermeneutic, interpretive, and normative methods of the humanities to agentic AI.
• Formalizing philosophical concepts such as intentionality, meaning, and pragmatics in agent models.
• Influence of humanities-oriented AI research on the design of transparent and explainable systems.

Causal, Dynamic, and Probabilistic-Relational Foundation Models

• Models of uncertainty in agentic systems.
• Models for robust explanations of agent decisions and their consequences.
• Relational models for describing social structures and interactions among agents.
• Information systems for supporting the training, evaluation, and continuous learning of foundation models.
• Adequate causality-based approaches to modeling fairness and/or responsibility.

Keynote

Ulrich Furbach, University of Koblenz, Germany

Publication

The proceedings will be made available in the CEUR Workshop Proceedings series.

Workshop Organizers and Co-Chairs

• Johannes Fähndrich, Hochschule für Polizei Baden-Württemberg, Germany
• Özgür Lütfü Özçep, Universität Hamburg, Germany

Program Committee

• Stefano Moretti, CNRS, LAMSADE, France
• Kevin Baum, DFKI / CERTAIN, Germany
• Alex Marin, University of Washington, USA
• Roxana Radulescu, Utrecht University, NL
• Jonas Karge, TU Dresden, Germany
• Susanne Draheim, University of Applied Sciences (HAW), Hamburg, Germany
• Marcel Gehrke, University of Hamburg, Germany
• Ralf Möller, University of Hamburg, Germany
• Ulrich Furbach, University of Koblenz, Germany

Important Dates

• Deadline for Submission: 30 May 2026
• Notification of Authors: 7 June 2026
• Early bird registration: 8 June 2026
• Camera-ready Paper: 30 June 2026
• Workshop (half-day): 11 August 2026 (tentative)

Submission Details

Papers should be formatted in CEUR style (1-column style) without enabled header and footer. The author kit can be found at CEURART.zip. The length of long papers should not exceed 15 pages (excluding references). The length of short papers should not exceed 7 pages. All papers must be written in English and submitted in PDF format via the EasyChair submission system. One of the authors is expected to participate in the workshop and present their paper.

• LaTeX Template (Overleaf)