25 research outputs found
Finite automata games: basic concepts.
In this chapter we review the basic concepts on automata games, including best response, inference, equilibrium and complex system dynamics. We describe how the concept of Nash equilibrium is used to analyze the properties of automata systems and discuss its limitations. We explain why we think the topics of automata inference, the modeling of evolving automata, and the analysis of the relationship between emotions and reason, are interesting areas for further research
Generalizing Agent Plans and Behaviors with Automated Staged Observation in The Real-Time Strategy Game Starcraft
In this thesis we investigate the processes involved in learning to play a game. It was inspired by two observations about how human players learn to play. First, learning the domain is intertwined with goal pursuit. Second, games are designed to ramp up in complexity, walking players through a gradual cycle of acquiring, refining, and generalizing knowledge about the domain. This approach does not rely on traces of expert play. We created an integrated planning, learning and execution system that uses StarCraft as its domain. The planning module creates command/event groupings based on the data received. Observations of unit behavior are collected during execution and returned to the learning module which tests the generalization hypothesizes. The planner uses those test results to generate events that will pursue the goal and facilitate learning the domain. We demonstrate that this approach can efficiently learn the subtle traits of commands through multiple scenarios
Trusting Intentions Towards Robots in Healthcare: A Theoretical Framework
Within the next decade, robots (intelligent agents that are able to perform tasks normally requiring human intelligence) may become more popular when delivering healthcare services to patients. The use of robots in this way may be daunting for some members of the public, who may not understand this technology and deem it untrustworthy. Others may be excited to use and trust robots to support their healthcare needs. It is argued that (1) context plays an integral role in Information Systems (IS) research and (2) technology demonstrating anthropomorphic or system-like features impact the extent to which an individual trusts the technology. Yet, there is little research which integrates these two concepts within one study in healthcare. To address this gap, we develop a theoretical framework that considers trusting intentions towards robots based on the interaction of humans and robots within the contextual landscape of delivering healthcare services. This article presents a theory-based approach to developing effective trustworthy intelligent agents at the intersection of IS and Healthcare
Asimovian Adaptive Agents
The goal of this research is to develop agents that are adaptive and
predictable and timely. At first blush, these three requirements seem
contradictory. For example, adaptation risks introducing undesirable side
effects, thereby making agents' behavior less predictable. Furthermore,
although formal verification can assist in ensuring behavioral predictability,
it is known to be time-consuming. Our solution to the challenge of satisfying
all three requirements is the following. Agents have finite-state automaton
plans, which are adapted online via evolutionary learning (perturbation)
operators. To ensure that critical behavioral constraints are always satisfied,
agents' plans are first formally verified. They are then reverified after every
adaptation. If reverification concludes that constraints are violated, the
plans are repaired. The main objective of this paper is to improve the
efficiency of reverification after learning, so that agents have a sufficiently
rapid response time. We present two solutions: positive results that certain
learning operators are a priori guaranteed to preserve useful classes of
behavioral assurance constraints (which implies that no reverification is
needed for these operators), and efficient incremental reverification
algorithms for those learning operators that have negative a priori results
Agent-based simulation: an application to the new electricity trading arrangements of England and Wales.
This paper presents a large-scale application of multiagent evolutionary modeling to the proposed new electricity trading arrangements (NETA) in the U.K. This is a detailed plant-by-plant model with an active specification of the demand side of the market. NETA involves a bilateral forward market followed by a balancing mechanism and then an imbalance settlement process. This agent-based simulation model was able to provide pricing and strategic insights, ahead of NETA's actual introduction
Interpretable Sequence Classification via Discrete Optimization
Sequence classification is the task of predicting a class label given a
sequence of observations. In many applications such as healthcare monitoring or
intrusion detection, early classification is crucial to prompt intervention. In
this work, we learn sequence classifiers that favour early classification from
an evolving observation trace. While many state-of-the-art sequence classifiers
are neural networks, and in particular LSTMs, our classifiers take the form of
finite state automata and are learned via discrete optimization. Our
automata-based classifiers are interpretable---supporting explanation,
counterfactual reasoning, and human-in-the-loop modification---and have strong
empirical performance. Experiments over a suite of goal recognition and
behaviour classification datasets show our learned automata-based classifiers
to have comparable test performance to LSTM-based classifiers, with the added
advantage of being interpretable
Existence of Multiagent Equilibria with Limited Agents
Multiagent learning is a necessary yet challenging problem as multiagent
systems become more prevalent and environments become more dynamic. Much of the
groundbreaking work in this area draws on notable results from game theory, in
particular, the concept of Nash equilibria. Learners that directly learn an
equilibrium obviously rely on their existence. Learners that instead seek to
play optimally with respect to the other players also depend upon equilibria
since equilibria are fixed points for learning. From another perspective,
agents with limitations are real and common. These may be undesired physical
limitations as well as self-imposed rational limitations, such as abstraction
and approximation techniques, used to make learning tractable. This article
explores the interactions of these two important concepts: equilibria and
limitations in learning. We introduce the question of whether equilibria
continue to exist when agents have limitations. We look at the general effects
limitations can have on agent behavior, and define a natural extension of
equilibria that accounts for these limitations. Using this formalization, we
make three major contributions: (i) a counterexample for the general existence
of equilibria with limitations, (ii) sufficient conditions on limitations that
preserve their existence, (iii) three general classes of games and limitations
that satisfy these conditions. We then present empirical results from a
specific multiagent learning algorithm applied to a specific instance of
limited agents. These results demonstrate that learning with limitations is
feasible, when the conditions outlined by our theoretical analysis hold
Toward data-driven solutions to interactive dynamic influence diagrams
With the availability of significant amount of data, data-driven decision making becomes an alternative way for solving complex multiagent decision problems. Instead of using domain knowledge to explicitly build decision models, the data-driven approach learns decisions (probably optimal ones) from available data. This removes the knowledge bottleneck in the traditional knowledge-driven decision making, which requires a strong support from domain experts. In this paper, we study data-driven decision making in the context of interactive dynamic influence diagrams (I-DIDs)—a general framework for multiagent sequential decision making under uncertainty. We propose a data-driven framework to solve the I-DIDs model and focus on learning the behavior of other agents in problem domains. The challenge is on learning a complete policy tree that will be embedded in the I-DIDs models due to limited data. We propose two new methods to develop complete policy trees for the other agents in the I-DIDs. The first method uses a simple clustering process, while the second one employs sophisticated statistical checks. We analyze the proposed algorithms in a theoretical way and experiment them over two problem domains