The importance of context-dependent learning in negotiation agents

Automated negotiation between arti cial agents is essential to deploy Cognitive Computing and Internet of Things. The behavior of a negotiating agent depends signi cantly on the in uence of environmental conditions or contextual variables, since they affect not only a given agent preferences and strategies, but also those of other agents. Despite this, the existing literature on automated negotiation is scarce about how to properly account for the effect of context-relevant variables in learning and evolving strategies. In this paper, a novel context-driven representation for automated negotiation is proposed. Also, a simple negotiating agent that queries available information from its environment, internally models contextual variables, and learns how to take advantage of this knowledge by playing against himself using reinforcement learning is proposed. Through a set of episodes against negotiating agents in the existing literature, it is shown that it makes no sense to negotiate without taking context-relevant variables into account. The context-aware negotiating agent has been implemented in the GENIUS negotiation environment, and results obtained are signi cant and revealing.Sociedad Argentina de Informática e Investigación Operativ

The importance of context-dependent learning in negotiation agents

Automated negotiation between arti cial agents is essential to deploy Cognitive Computing and Internet of Things. The behavior of a negotiating agent depends signi cantly on the in uence of environmental conditions or contextual variables, since they affect not only a given agent preferences and strategies, but also those of other agents. Despite this, the existing literature on automated negotiation is scarce about how to properly account for the effect of context-relevant variables in learning and evolving strategies. In this paper, a novel context-driven representation for automated negotiation is proposed. Also, a simple negotiating agent that queries available information from its environment, internally models contextual variables, and learns how to take advantage of this knowledge by playing against himself using reinforcement learning is proposed. Through a set of episodes against negotiating agents in the existing literature, it is shown that it makes no sense to negotiate without taking context-relevant variables into account. The context-aware negotiating agent has been implemented in the GENIUS negotiation environment, and results obtained are signi cant and revealing.Sociedad Argentina de Informática e Investigación Operativ

The importance of context-dependent learning in negotiation agents

Automated negotiation between arti cial agents is essential to deploy Cognitive Computing and Internet of Things. The behavior of a negotiating agent depends signi cantly on the in uence of environmental conditions or contextual variables, since they affect not only a given agent preferences and strategies, but also those of other agents. Despite this, the existing literature on automated negotiation is scarce about how to properly account for the effect of context-relevant variables in learning and evolving strategies. In this paper, a novel context-driven representation for automated negotiation is proposed. Also, a simple negotiating agent that queries available information from its environment, internally models contextual variables, and learns how to take advantage of this knowledge by playing against himself using reinforcement learning is proposed. Through a set of episodes against negotiating agents in the existing literature, it is shown that it makes no sense to negotiate without taking context-relevant variables into account. The context-aware negotiating agent has been implemented in the GENIUS negotiation environment, and results obtained are signi cant and revealing.Sociedad Argentina de Informática e Investigación Operativ

An Evolutionary Learning Approach for Adaptive Negotiation Agents

Developing effective and efficient negotiation mechanisms for real-world applications such as e-Business is challenging since negotiations in such a context are characterised by combinatorially complex negotiation spaces, tough deadlines, very limited information about the opponents, and volatile negotiator preferences. Accordingly, practical negotiation systems should be empowered by effective learning mechanisms to acquire dynamic domain knowledge from the possibly changing negotiation contexts. This paper illustrates our adaptive negotiation agents which are underpinned by robust evolutionary learning mechanisms to deal with complex and dynamic negotiation contexts. Our experimental results show that GA-based adaptive negotiation agents outperform a theoretically optimal negotiation mechanism which guarantees Pareto optimal. Our research work opens the door to the development of practical negotiation systems for real-world applications

Teaching and learning together: Making space for curriculum negotiation in higher education.

Research in compulsory sectors of education indicates that curriculum negotiation (sometimes termed co-construction) between teacher and students is beneficial for both students and teachers. It would seem, therefore, that this approach would be equally valuable in the tertiary context of initial teacher education, as a model of a good teaching approach for student teachers to observe and experience. However, enacting this approach in the context of an academic tertiary programme is often perceived as problematic. This paper discusses theoretical underpinnings of curriculum negotiation, its foundations, implementation and benefits. It then describes actions taken by a university teaching team which endeavoured to create spaces for the negotiation of curriculum, and to intentionally model curriculum negotiation. The ways in which staff and students have been able to work together collaboratively, giving both parties shared influence, input and control of learning, are explored. I contend that curriculum negotiation is an essential element within teacher education programmes if we hope to maximise learning engagement and outcomes and model an effective pedagogy