Arguing and negotiating in the presence of social influences

Postprin

Analysis of Dialogical Argumentation via Finite State Machines

Dialogical argumentation is an important cognitive activity by which agents exchange arguments and counterarguments as part of some process such as discussion, debate, persuasion and negotiation. Whilst numerous formal systems have been proposed, there is a lack of frameworks for implementing and evaluating these proposals. First-order executable logic has been proposed as a general framework for specifying and analysing dialogical argumentation. In this paper, we investigate how we can implement systems for dialogical argumentation using propositional executable logic. Our approach is to present and evaluate an algorithm that generates a finite state machine that reflects a propositional executable logic specification for a dialogical argumentation together with an initial state. We also consider how the finite state machines can be analysed, with the minimax strategy being used as an illustration of the kinds of empirical analysis that can be undertaken.Comment: 10 page

Proceedings of the 11th European Agent Systems Summer School Student Session

This volume contains the papers presented at the Student Session of the 11th European Agent Systems Summer School (EASSS) held on 2nd of September 2009 at Educatorio della Providenza, Turin, Italy. The Student Session, organised by students, is designed to encourage student interaction and feedback from the tutors. By providing the students with a conference-like setup, both in the presentation and in the review process, students have the opportunity to prepare their own submission, go through the selection process and present their work to each other and their interests to their fellow students as well as internationally leading experts in the agent field, both from the theoretical and the practical sector. Table of Contents: Andrew Koster, Jordi Sabater Mir and Marco Schorlemmer, Towards an inductive algorithm for learning trust alignment . . . 5; Angel Rolando Medellin, Katie Atkinson and Peter McBurney, A Preliminary Proposal for Model Checking Command Dialogues. . . 12; Declan Mungovan, Enda Howley and Jim Duggan, Norm Convergence in Populations of Dynamically Interacting Agents . . . 19; Akın Günay, Argumentation on Bayesian Networks for Distributed Decision Making . . 25; Michael Burkhardt, Marco Luetzenberger and Nils Masuch, Towards Toolipse 2: Tool Support for the JIAC V Agent Framework . . . 30; Joseph El Gemayel, The Tenacity of Social Actors . . . 33; Cristian Gratie, The Impact of Routing on Traffic Congestion . . . 36; Andrei-Horia Mogos and Monica Cristina Voinescu, A Rule-Based Psychologist Agent for Improving the Performances of a Sportsman . . . 39; --Autonomer Agent,Agent,Künstliche Intelligenz

ProCLAIM: an argument-based model for deliberating over safety critical actions

In this Thesis we present an argument-based model – ProCLAIM – intended to provide a setting for heterogeneous agents to deliberate on whether a proposed action is safe. That is, whether or not a proposed action is expected to cause some undesirable side effect that will justify not to undertake the proposed action. This is particularly relevant in safetycritical environments where the consequences ensuing from an inappropriate action may be catastrophic. For the practical realisation of the deliberations the model features a mediator agent with three main tasks: 1) guide the participating agents in what their valid argumentation moves are at each stage of the deliberation; 2) decide whether submitted arguments should be accepted on the basis of their relevance; and finally, 3) evaluate the accepted arguments in order to provide an assessment on whether the proposed action should or should not be undertaken, where the argument evaluation is based on domain consented knowledge (e.g guidelines and regulations), evidence and the decision makers’ expertise. To motivate ProCLAIM’s practical value and generality the model is applied in two scenarios: human organ transplantation and industrial wastewater. In the former scenario, ProCLAIM is used to facilitate the deliberation between two medical doctors on whether an available organ for transplantation is or is not suitable for a particular potential recipient (i.e. whether it is safe to transplant the organ). In the later scenario, a number of agents deliberate on whether an industrial discharge is environmentally safe.En esta tesis se presenta un modelo basado en la Argumentación –ProCLAIM– cuyo n es proporcionar un entorno para la deliberación sobre acciones críticas para la seguridad entre agentes heterogéneos. En particular, el propósito de la deliberación es decidir si los efectos secundario indeseables de una acción justi can no llevarla a cabo. Esto es particularmente relevante en entornos críticos para la seguridad, donde las consecuencias que se derivan de una acción inadecuada puede ser catastró cas. Para la realización práctica de las deliberaciones propuestas, el modelo cuenta con un agente mediador con tres tareas principales: 1) guiar a los agentes participantes indicando cuales son las líneas argumentación válidas en cada etapa de la deliberación; 2) decidir si los argumentos presentados deben ser aceptadas sobre la base de su relevancia y, por último, 3) evaluar los argumentos aceptados con el n de proporcionar una valoración sobre la seguridad de la acción propuesta. Esta valoración se basa en guías y regulaciones del dominio de aplicación, en evidencia y en la opinión de los expertos responsables de la decisión. Para motivar el valor práctico y la generalidad de ProCLAIM, este modelo se aplica en dos escenarios distintos: el trasplante de órganos y la gestión de aguas residuales. En el primer escenario el modelo se utiliza para facilitar la deliberación entre dos médicos sobre la viabilidad del transplante de un órgano para un receptor potencial (es decir, si el transplante es seguro). En el segundo escenario varios agentes deliberan sobre si los efectos de un vertido industrial con el propósito de minimizar su impacto medioambiental

Case-Based Argumentation in Agent Societies

Hoy en día los sistemas informáticos complejos se pueden ven en términos de los servicios que ofrecen y las entidades que interactúan para proporcionar o consumir dichos servicios. Los sistemas multi-agente abiertos, donde los agentes pueden entrar o salir del sistema, interactuar y formar grupos (coaliciones de agentes u organizaciones) de forma dinámica para resolver problemas, han sido propuestos como una tecnología adecuada para implementar este nuevo paradigma informático. Sin embargo, el amplio dinamismo de estos sistemas requiere que los agentes tengan una forma de armonizar los conflictos que surgen cuando tienen que colaborar y coordinar sus actividades. En estas situaciones, los agentes necesitan un mecanismo para argumentar de forma eficiente (persuadir a otros agentes para que acepten sus puntos de vista, negociar los términos de un contrato, etc.) y poder llegar a acuerdos. La argumentación es un medio natural y efectivo para abordar los conflictos y contradicciones del conocimiento. Participando en diálogos argumentativos, los agentes pueden llegar a acuerdos con otros agentes. En un sistema multi-agente abierto, los agentes pueden formar sociedades que los vinculan a través de relaciones de dependencia. Estas relaciones pueden surgir de sus interacciones o estar predefinidas por el sistema. Además, los agentes pueden tener un conjunto de valores individuales o sociales, heredados de los grupos a los que pertenecen, que quieren promocionar. Las dependencias entre los agentes y los grupos a los que pertenecen y los valores individuales y sociales definen el contexto social del agente. Este contexto tiene una influencia decisiva en la forma en que un agente puede argumentar y llegar a acuerdos con otros agentes. Por tanto, el contexto social de los agentes debería tener una influencia decisiva en la representación computacional de sus argumentos y en el proceso de gestión de argumentos.Heras Barberá, SM. (2011). Case-Based Argumentation in Agent Societies [Tesis doctoral no publicada]. Universitat Politècnica de València. https://doi.org/10.4995/Thesis/10251/12497Palanci

Interaction among BDI argumentative agents: a dialogue games approach

Negotiation is a fundamental activity in a multi-agent system. The members of the system negotiate in order to coordinate their activities and to distribute resources and tasks trying to reach a state acceptable to all. Carrying out a negotiation process requires that agents be able to interact. In this work, protocol interaction is implemented by means of dialogues between agents, and the set of dialogues generated inside the same negotiation process conforms a conversation. We propose an interaction language that allows argumentation-based negotiation among collaborative BDI agents. For the language description we use a formalism, called Dialogue Games, which allows to specify the nature of the utterancesVI Workshop de Agentes y Sistemas Inteligentes (WASI)Red de Universidades con Carreras en Informática (RedUNCI

Modelling dialogues in agent societies

Besides the simpler ability to interact, open multi-agent systems must include mechanisms for their agents to reach agreements by taking into account their social context. Argumentation provides multi-agent systems with a framework that assures a rational communication, which allows agents to reach agreements when conflicts of opinion arise. In this paper, we present the dialogue protocol that agents of a case-based argumentation framework can use to interact when they engage in argumentation dialogues. The syntax and semantics of the argumentation protocol are formalised and discussed. To illustrate our proposal, we have applied the protocol in the context of a water market. By using our dialogue protocol, agents represent water users that are able to explore different water allocations and justify their views about what is the best water distribution in a certain environment.This work is supported by the Spanish government Grants CONSOLIDER INGENIO 2010 CSD2007-00022, MINECO/FEDER TIN2012-36586-C03-01, and MICINN TIN2011-27652-C03-01.Heras Barberá, SM.; Botti Navarro, VJ.; Julian Inglada, VJ. (2014). Modelling dialogues in agent societies. Engineering Applications of Artificial Intelligence. 34:208-226. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.engappai.2014.06.003S2082263